Have you ever given any thought to time? What exactly
is it, and how should we think about it?
Some of the most entertaining expressions in the English
language deal with time.
I spoke with someone a few weeks ago about the possibility
that they might do something for me one a regular basis. Their
response? "I just don't have enough time."
What does that mean? I wondered. They have as much (or as
little) time as I do - 24 hours a day. I suppose that one could
argue that time spent asleep doesn't count. Maybe they sleep more than I do - which would mean I have more time than them. Oh
well...
Akin to not having enough time is the idea of saving some
time. How does one go about that. I know that electricity can be
stored (temporarily) in a battery. I've heard of canning beans
and freezing corn. But what kind of a container does one store
time in? And what happens if the lid isn't on tight enough? Does
time spoil? Or does it taste like you canned it under the wrong sign?
If I could save a some time, I would. Because Benjanim
Franklin said "time is money." If Ben was right, I could
pay some bills with time I saved that I wasn't planning to use,
anyway. Time must have some value as a currency because we hear
regularly of people spending time and wasting time. I never have been able to figure out how the exchange rate on
time works. What's an hour worth in dollars these days?
Marcel Proust may have found the problem with turning time directly into money. He said that time is not a fixed
commodity:
"The time which we have at our disposal everyday is
elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those we inspire
contract it; and habit fills up what remains. - Remembrance of Things Past
An alternative to the view that time is a currency - like
French Francs or Thai Baht or (worse yet) Rubles - is
the idea that time is alive in some way. In Poor Richard's Almanac Franklin gave us this piece
of advice:
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's
the stuff life is made of.
I like that - although I probably wouldn't have used the
dost thou and I might have used "don't" instead of do
not. But I like Franklin's stuff. "Stuff" is one of my favorite words.
"What's for dinner, daddy?"
"Chicken stuff."
Or, to turn it around, when I ask my duaghters what they've
