Waste, or Lack Thereof
I often think about time these days, of wasting time and whether it’s possible ever to truly waste something so ultimately undefinable and yet unavoidable. If you enjoyed an experience or relationship that occupied a span of time that you could otherwise have used for something else, can the time you spent on it really be considered wasted? If you learned something, anything, from an experience how can that be a waste, even if what you glean from it is nothing more than an oath of ‘never again’.
Endings come. Death comes. In the end we all end up shitting ourselves and passing on to nothingness but that does not make our lives a waste of time. A miserable marriage in which nothing is learned or enjoyed and that never held any love for either party, that is a waste of time. A life that ends with a negative balance, that has been full of more destruction, more self-effacement, more apathy than it has been of creation, self-refinement, and passion, that is a wasted life. An activity by which nothing is gained, no joy, no money, no knowledge, that is a waste of time. But an activity that produces nothing but joy? That is cannot be considered a waste. A marriage that was good and loving once, and ended on good terms before misery set in cannot be a waste. A life full of the search for wisdom and the illumination along the way, a life full of love and the loss that often necessarily accompanies it, a life spent pursuing joy but never lapsing into complacency, that absolutely cannot be a wasted life.