2022-08-06 Moments

How is your relationship with time? It might sound like a strange question, but it's essential. The American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them, and their value will never be known. Improve them, and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”

Do you have any spare moments to guard? If so, what are the obstacles to protecting these precious moments?

A recent episode of the Perennial Meditations podcast discussed Seneca’s letter On Saving Time. Seneca explained,

Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which until lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.

We are wrong when we look forward to death; a significant portion of death has already passed. The years of our lives behind us are in death’s hands, stressed Seneca. Our time is the one thing that is really ours, and it is never too early to start guarding it.