Tuesday 25 February 2014

How we spend our days


Days rush by in a powerful, rhythmic pattern. Day after day, measured in exactly the same number of hours; each one feeling a little bit different, yet familiar and recognisably the same. And just like that, completely beyond our control, time grows and all we can do is attempt to tame it where we can.

I came across these beautiful words about our attempts to tame time, to make it more productive by Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life (found via brainpickings). They just really resonated with me:
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labour with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern."

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