Time for Tea
This came via Tim.
I've felt for years that we suffer from the loss of a sense of 'timeliness' - or at least its marginalisation, edged out by Ben Franklin's famous equation of time with money. Believe that and time becomes purely a matter of quantity, a currency to be exchanged.
For me, the qualities of time are important: apparently contradictory actions may be equally proper at their different occasions. Lose sight of this - of the incommensurability of what matters - and life becomes harshly impoverished.
3 comments:
Dougald,
I'm not sure what the context was for Ben Franklin when he "coined" his famous statement that time is money... "Time = Money" .
But the power of those words / equation has been immense and in the long run destructive. It's power comes from the fertile ground of wanting more money and seeing that as a way "out." But the "out" is more a trap than a trapdoor to freedom.
I totally agree that the equation, by focusing our attention on the monetary value of time, ultimately marginalises the experience of the moment in time.
Tim
"To spend two hours on a cup of tea is an act of resistance."
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Thanks, Nick - beautiful quote!
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