Musings on time allocation amid a life long-lived, an evaluation of what hours were used wisely and how many were frittered away…
by: Matias Travieso-Diaz
And I am not alone,
while my love is near me,
I know it will be so,
until it’s time to go,
So come the storms of winter,
and then the birds in spring again,
I have no fear of time.
In the latter part of the 1960s I was a young graduate student in Columbus, Ohio, a thousand miles away from my family in Florida, largely alone but in the process of gathering a small circle of friends. It was the heyday of folk music, and songs by artists like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul and Mary inundated the airwaves. Their songs resonated with my spirit, as I identified with many of the sentiments they expressed.
One of my favorite artists those days was a young singer, whose full, enticing alto voice drew your attention no matter what you were doing when one of her songs played on the radio. Judy Collins was immensely popular then and remained so for decades. I played her albums often, particularly Wildflowers, and later her songs inspired two of my better short stories.
As with most things in life, my love for Judy Collins’ songs never disappeared but became submerged under other passions when my life evolved — a period of concentration in my law school studies, followed by several years of toiling as a law firm associate, left little room for the enjoyment of folk music. My earlier passion for classical music also returned, confining all other musical genres to the attic of forgotten affections.
This morning, I was surfing through YouTube when I landed on a song that I had not heard in six decades but immediately recognized: Judy Collins’ cover of “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” a ballad by the British folk singer Sandy Denny. I knew the song’s lyrics by heart but had never spent a minute reflecting on their meaning. Today, they hit me like a body blow, for their message was always, inadvertently, intended for me. As long as my love was near me, I would have no fear of time. I never considered how time flowed and how well or poorly I was using my allotment of that precious commodity.
Now my love is gone and I am left to reckon with how my life has been spent, and how much time I used wisely and how much was frittered away. Off the bat, I must recognize that the bulk of my living hours has been spent in things that were necessary but inconsequential: sleeping, eating, grooming myself, taking care of other bodily needs, interacting with the people I know and the world at large on mundane matters. For the most part, these were inevitable expenditures of time that should be subtracted from the over 730,000 hours I have lived thus far. I reckon that there have been only 60,000 hours of my life over which I have had control. I had the ability to put those hours to some worthy purpose (whatever it was), or waste them. What did I do?
At the risk of double counting, I must regard the hours I have spent interacting with may wife, daughter, parents, other relatives, and friends as worthwhile, not only because they were for the most part pleasurable but because they built cherished memories, the most valuable thing that one can purchase through the expenditure of time. I will generously take credit for 30,000 hours, though I know in my heart that I did not spend as much time as I should have devoted to those endeavors.
That leaves 30,000 hours of my life (roughly about one hour of each day I have lived) that I must account for. I would like to be able to say that every one of those hours was spent in a worthwhile endeavor, but it would not be easy to support such a claim.
Some people devote considerable effort to maintaining their bodies in the best possible condition, but I am not one of those, and over the years — particularly the most recent ones — I have become increasingly less interested in the state of my body, and more in matters of the mind and soul. I will probably pay for my slovenliness in the final tally of my days, but so be it. I have spent, say, no more than ten minutes of that hour in matters of the body. Luckily, I have been a generally healthy person, so my “sick” hours folds into the number of body-mindful hours.
That still leaves 25,000 hours of my life for with which I must account. Where did they go?
I am not a religious person nor one given to meditation. A self-centered individual, I am not politically active or engage in civic affairs. However, I can make a partial accounting when I consider the things to which I am drawn. I enjoy, and often seek, mental stimulation — reading, watching movies and shows, listening to music or books on tape, doing puzzles and similar forms of entertainment (I do not count studying or engaging in work-related matters here, because I consider them part of the mundane activities addressed before). Maybe 20 minutes of that hour have been spent in those pastimes.
That leaves a net final half an hour of each day of my life to account for: 15,000 total hours. What did I do with them?
In the last nine years, I have devoted an increasing share of my waking hours to creative writing. I probably spend, on the average, three hours a day seeking ideas to turn into writings and then implementing those ideas. That adds up to about 10,000 hours. And I am left with 5,000 total hours: 10 minutes of every day of my life, for which I cannot reasonably account.
This tally will certainly change depending on how I spend the rest of my years. As of now, I can conclude that while I have wasted a lot of time in my life, I could have done worse. Lest I become too smug, however, I must remind myself that, however wise its expenditure, time will slip out like water running through your fingers, and at the end a common nothingness will await us all.
Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Over two hundred and ninety of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books, and podcasts. One of his four novels, an autobiography entitled “Cuban Transplant,” and four anthologies of his stories have also been published.
