Time wasted.

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis

Wednesday January 23, 2013 23:08

by Gale Vogel - Birds Eye View

Time is one of our most important resources. That this is continually wasted throught futile debate that is too often followed often by nothing.

Every moment is valuable. We can make more money, we can never make more time. That we waste this vital resource in so many ways is a shame. We waste it when it is free, we waste it when it costs. We waste it in futile debate about solutions to problems, some of which never were. We waste it through broken promises. We waste it by trying to buy it, by trying to give it away or sell it. Sometimes, the most valuable thing we can do is to sit still for a moment. Take stock, life is not a race. There is no urgency, and most certainly money is not the real priority that we have today. It is also certain that money is not the solution.

Officially it would appear that priority today is exclusively related to finance. Time spent is about money and repairing the extensive damage done to those wealthy while ignoring the damage being caused to most people. Time spent in futile pursuit is time lost, forever. Is it now that we should admit that the problem is not repairable? Like a broken, old and rusting heap that once was a car lying damp in a ditch, it cannot be repaired. If this analogy is indeed true, as it most definitely is for some, then a new car is perhaps the only remedy. A remedy, not repair to a human plight but the complete replacement of the driven system. It is true for some, those dying from stress, those taking their own lives out of frustration and despair are the same for whom this impasse will remain for their entire lives. We can make more money, we can make more material things but no ingenuity will ever make it possible for us to make more time. Money lost is a challenge. As with any challenge, time used correctly may allow us to rise to the challenge. The time we have lost is lost forever, let us not loose any more time.

It is therefore of great importance that we use the time we have to the absolute best, to be the best that we can be for both ourselves and our fellow human beings. It is time then to concentrate on people first, protect the true value that we do have, our children and our people. This means providing education and the opportunity for those already educated to carry us through the challenge. Without this opportunity we are unlikely to achieve any reasonable goal.

Today, I spoke with Simon who expressed that he was neither happy nor sad. He spoke clearly and used his hands to demonstrate a level and explained.
'There was a time when happiness was here.' He held his hand horizontal and high, then lowered his hand four inches.
'This was less than happy, but not sad or upset.' He lowered his hand a further four inches.
'This may have been sad.' Without changing the level.
'This today is happy, but today happy is gained through what we do not want, at times through an absence of suffering. The simple walks no longer interest me, my bike is gone, my car is gone, my job is slow. There is no joy today in happiness. Happiness is relative, today anything above miserable is considered by too many to be happiness. The surveys might say the Irish are the happiest nation in Europe. We do smile and laugh in the face of despair.'
Simon was silent. He neither smiled nor cried, nor did he laugh.

Simon suffers an increasingly typical syndrome of not caring and deems what should be normal as being above happy, it makes the unbearable bearable. We all seek to be normal and in assuming despair to be normal, then one might assume themselves to be happy. He smiles genuinely he says very seldom, but these wonderful moments of light are for him the bliss that makes the plight worth the fight.

We all hope that those blissful moments will become more in this relatively New Year and in the future.