Anyone who ever tells you that time is just a construct is a liar, and probably a thief. Not necessarily of money or objects of value, but of energy and time itself. Every person I’ve ever met who pushes this ideal is what we Satanists define as a psychic vampire: A leech of mental and emotional energy who places their wants over the needs of others, and their feelings above everyone else’s rights. They come in many forms, from low energy, always relaxing Boomer archetypes to the Mom’s basement, armchair quarterback Gen Z stereotype, and of course the early Gen X burnout slackers. Some still exist, despite the odds, and I kind of hate them for giving us other X’s such a reputation to battle.
Every person I’ve met with this supposedly Zen anti-time approach is both miserable and wholly unsuccessful and seems to take issue with anyone else being more driven or urgent than them. Which eventually ends up being almost everyone, leaving them lonely and confused, as they deserve to be for being so pretentious as to place their values above nature, and basic human instinct. It’s a concept that comes from privilege, be it cultural or psychological, and to normalize it is to assume mediocrity is acceptable to all.
Time is real. Animals observe it (almost to the minute, if my garden is any indication), and nature as a whole does too. Life is lived in days and seasons, as it always has been and will be. To embrace each season for its purpose, be they literal or metaphorical, is better than to desire perpetual summers or springs. Humans may have invented the increments we see on our clocks and calendars, but time itself endures with or without us. It doesn’t care about our gods, or our feelings, or our personal circumstances, and as such is one of the few constants than can overrule any reasons (or excuses) we offer.
Money comes and goes. Feelings, for the most part, are fleeting and ephemeral. People weave in and out of lives, but time lost is gone forever. The only thing one can do to address that loss is to maximize the time ahead. Life is short, an afterlife or next life is NEVER guaranteed (no matter what you believe), and you won’t be young forever, no matter how many shitty pop songs or picture filters tell you. Nor should you want to be, as aging is natural, and death is real, and frankly pretty mundane. If you’re smart, you’ll learn to trade the emotional intensity of youth for the mental sophistication of age, appreciating the world in much greater scope and detail.
I used to be pretty emotional, and I don’t miss it to be honest. I have more energy now without it, and I genuinely don’t care whether I’m happy, sad, or mad. As a survivor of heavy depression, severe OCD and various kinds of abuse and poverty, I assure you I don’t say that lightly. None of those moods really last for long, and I’m happy more often than not, precisely because I don’t care if I am. I gave up on pursuing that shit years ago and started worrying about only three things above all: Time, independence, and control.
I try to be engaged and productive unless I’m utterly exhausted at the beginning or end if the day, because of my exertions from that day or the one before. My fatigue is earned. I enjoy being sore because I kicked my own ass working out the previous night, or being tired on the one day off I take each month. I can actually truly relax on that day, because some of us can oy ever relax when burnout occurs, and that’s perfectly natural, no matter what low achievers will tell you.
The happiness I once sought was like a perpetually dangled carrot, held by a weak hand just out of reach. Or a set of goalposts being moved at the last possible moment, to the point of utter absurdity. While my journey is fairly unusual, the sentiment is far from unique. The happiness we are being sold by everything from pop psychology to pop music is a sugar/drug/emotional high with a taxing comedown. It’s sold as a communal offering, instead of a personal experience, like a really good trip often needs to be.
We live in a society driven to misery by an unrealistic pursuit of happiness. A happiness that is built more on false competition and ego than a genuine drive to better oneself in meaningful ways, as a result of genuine self-worth. It’s in the grandstanding of social media, the pathetic, patronizing falsity of advertising, and of course radio and video.
Happiness is proposed as some sort of mythical destination, much like heaven and other lies. No, heaven doesn’t get a capital h here, nor god a capital g. The thing is that happiness is not a place one goes to, but one they pass through on their way to the real end goal: Death. Not by rushing there, but by using the time they have as best they can. It’s not that that happiness is unimportant, but it’s a byproduct. It usually comes as a result of learning the lessons, painful or not, doing the work and using the time, even if only to create distance from memories of the past.
We’ve centered Western culture around feelings and reactions instead of thoughts that define actions, and we’ve much to learn from elsewhere in that sense. We’ve made death and aging taboos to the point of fetishism, and placed an insane emphasis on the both the first and last quarter of life, instead of the middle. You know, where the most critical parts of the narrative usually lie, and where the most important decisions tend to be made. Trends are mainly driven by the immaturity and hyperbole of the young, while the politics are mostly decided by people so old, I have to question whether experience is more crucial than their acuity and flexibility.
Maybe it’s ageist or generational bias, but as a 38 year old, sometimes I want the people who are either retired, or too young to be paying rent, to shut the fuck up about people being in too much of a hurry. Or not slowing down and smelling the roses when it’s metaphorically winter, and you need to chop wood for the fire so we ALL don’t freeze. And before you burn down all the forests.
Being my age at this point in history feels like being the rope in an unhealthy push/pull dynamic between generations with often unrealistic concepts of time. Those that came before me built a culture around living for retirement and lifestyle leisure, usually hitting their life experience level cap in their 30’s and having the luxury of not having to change much afterwards. Those born after me usually can’t afford any of that, and so many are economically stuck in a culture built around teenage level life experience and reasoning, with the desperate low self-esteem/high ego dynamic that follows.
It’s a shame that in a world where we most are buried in a phone most of the time, with a clock in constant view, that time isn’t more valued. That communication is getting worse, almost inexplicably. That private, personal time is so willingly wasted by everyone from corporations to the bridge trolls of the internet. That it has been turned into an expendable commodity instead of the most precious resource, both in how you treat people and how you let them treat you.
