There was a time when Monday would call, and I would send it straight to voicemail.
Monday was the end of playtime, the end of rest and relaxation, and the universe’s demand that I return back to the salt mines.
At some point, it occurred to me that my job was exactly what I had wanted to do “when I grew up,” and it was not a call to go back to the salt mines but a call to get back to my calling. Once I realized that, I didn’t avoid Monday’s calls anymore.
If you resist Monday, it could be because you’re not doing the work you were called to do — or perhaps you are indeed following your calling but we’ve been trained to hate Monday.
What if you shed that training and choose to welcome a new week of doing the job that you fought to be chosen for?
Our “smart” devices fell back to Standard Time early this morning, and if we found every clock without a mind of its own last night, all of our clocks were “right” when we woke up.
It is a futile exercise — no matter how we set the clocks, we will have 10 hours and 11 minutes of daylight today. No daylight was saved during “daylight-saving time,” and no daylight is given back when Standard Time returns. We just change our frame of reference for reasons lost, ironically enough, to time.
As an early riser, I don’t object to sunrise coming up “an hour earlier,” because I enjoy watching the light outside slowly grow. If I had my way, we would always be on Standard Time, so the sun would rise around 4 a.m. in June, but whoever makes these decisions doesn’t want the sun in their eyes as they finish off a good night’s sleep, so they adjust the clock so the sun is in their eyes when they turn in for the night.
We each have 24 hours a day to do what we will, including the same amount of daylight whether we call it 7:00 or 8:00.
What we do with that time is more important than what time it is. It makes no difference if we decided finally to take action at 6:43 in the morning or 2:22 in the afternoon; what matters is the act. Whether it is too soon or too late is a matter of judgment — the action itself is what’s important.
We spend a lot of time — let me rephrase that — we waste a lot of time looking back with regrets. The present moment is all we control at any given time. We can assess whether a past action was a triumph or an oops — usually it’s somewhere in between — but allowing lingering melancholy over the passage of time and past actions takes away from what needs to be done in the here and now. Our earthly vessels are allotted a finite length of time, which naturally grows shorter by the minute, so it behooves us to waste as few precious moments as possible.
No, I do not consider it a waste to take time every morning to pick up a pen and fill at least three pages with my sometimes silly and often meaningless scratchings. Yes, I do chide myself when minutes and hours disappear into the void of antisocial media.
Even then, the antisocial platforms do serve the original purpose of giving friends a convenient space to interact. I am aware of what has become of friends and colleagues from 10, 20, 50 and 60 years ago, thanks to such platforms. To the extant that it ties us back together, each platform is a wonderful tool. I can do without whatever it is that draws us to fritter away precious moments staring at ads, vicious attacks and lies, and other material that exploits or appeals to the worst in us.
Every Sunday at precisely 9 a.m., my iPhone informs me how many hours and minutes I averaged staring at its screen in the past week. The number never fails to leave me aghast. Imagine if I’d spent that time on meaningful pursuits.
But I digress. I’d best be off applying this no-longer-saved daylight to its best use.
“It behooves us from time to time to take stock and realize we are already living a life we once only dreamed of.”
I did stop to take my own advice last night, as a Milwaukee Brewers fan watching the clinching game of the World Series — I took a moment to savor the moment. You only get to relish your team’s first championship once, so I drank in the feeling.
Still, I did not stop to write a new blog post for today, and so I dip into the archives for the piece where I wrote that sound (if I say so myself) advice. And, I might add, I now find that wanting your team to win the World Series was not quite as sweet as having your team win the World Series.
Oh, and last but not least, this is another preview of the material you’ll find in my upcoming book What I Came to Say: Making the Most of the Time That’s Left.
Toward the end of “Amok Time,” one of the finest episodes in the original series of Star Trek, Mr. Spock tells the man who desired and now has Spock’s former betrothed, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
The first car that I consciously purchased for myself was a used 1974 Ford Pinto wagon with a faux “woody” finish. I liked having a small practical car with space to transport something bigger than a bread box. Still do, actually — I’m currently driving a box chiefly purchased so the dogs have plenty of room to bounce around when we go for a ride.
When I walked into the showroom to ask the dealer about the Pinto, a Studebaker Golden Hawk was sitting on the main floor. It was a gorgeous vehicle, one of my dream cars. My dad was a Studebaker man — that’s all he bought from the late 1940s until they closed the plant in South Bend in 1965. He bought practical Studebakers like the Commander or the Lark; I fantasized about Hawks and Avantis.
“You want to drive her?” the guy asked, seeing the light in my eyes.
I was sorely tempted, but the sticker said $7,500 — a lot of money for a used car in 1975 — and so I confessed I was interested in the $1,750 Pinto out front. That remains the only time in my life that I had a chance to drive a Hawk, or any Studebaker, come to think of it, and I turned it down.
The first new car I bought was a somewhat less practical 1978 Pontiac Firebird. I loved the look, my girl was impressed after the Pinto, and it was a comfortable ride. But when the transmission failed after less than 20,000 miles, the last straw after a series of minor irritations, I realized the wisdom of Spock’s words.
In the 1990s I caught a bug to complete my collection of the Bantam reprints of the original Doc Savage pulp novels from 50-60 years earlier. There were 182 of them in all, published first one at a time, then two in one paperback, and finally a series of 13 omnibus editions collecting four or five of the short novels, between 1964 and 1990 — someone at Bantam was devoted to completing the task.
All the while I was collecting, I would read the stories, at least a dozen a year — it originally was a monthly magazine, after all — until I finally found the last omnibus I was seeking.
The complete collection holds an honored place on my shelf, but years now pass between my reading one Doc Savage novel and the next. I loved the thrill of the hunt, but it turns out that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting.
An old friend who ran a homeless shelter once told me the secret is not to go after what you want, it’s to want what you have. He and his wife never had more than about three months’ living expenses on hand, by design. They seemed like a happy couple.
We always fret more than we should about what we don’t have and think life will be better if only we could have it. It behooves us from time to time to take stock and realize we are already living a life we once only dreamed of.
