I woke up today and I thought, "I hate my job. At least, I hate this phase of my job. I wish I could just skip the next two months of my life and be done with it."
And then I was struck by the gravity and wrongness of my statement.
I guess recently I've realized that I'm concerned with my own finite mortality. I'm especially scared of growing old and dying. It's not that I'm worried, like Hamlet was, about "what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil." It's just that God gives us this one life, that we know of, to make count, and it's flying by day by day.
There are so many things I want to do, so many things I want to see, so many things I want to experience. This human existence that you're living in is the same one in which poets have penned sonnets, in which conquerors have taken Asia, in which architects have built skyscrapers, and in which lovers have built families. Life is too short to consider any of it expendable. I am 24: I am already 1/3 to 1/4 of the way through my expected term, and closer if unforeseen circumstances come to bear, and I feel like I'm just getting started. How can I afford to consider any period expendable? We do love to anticipate things to come, but I can't think of saying of any present period of time, "I wish it were over already" because it's part of a brief, finite lease on this earth. When we abide in the mentality that we wish now were over already, we don't consider the expendable time, and it's almost the same as if we had pressed our magical fast-forward button. --
-- I have to leave for work now. To be continued.
Continuation: there are a lot of things that could be said on the topic of finite mortality and carpe diem and all that, and most of them have been said to the point where there's nothing incredibly new on the subject I could post here. Suffice it to say that while there are things we suffer through patiently and deliberately, there is never a time where you should be wishing away a part of your God-given life. When that dilemma arises, either change your attitude or change your circumstances.
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6 comments:
Really? You've got the wrong attitude or are making the wrong choices if you ever feel that you'd be overall better off (or happier, or whatever you like) not having conscious experience of something? I note that conscious experience is what we're talking about - you weren't wishing that you could not learn to be a nuclear sub dude, you were just wanting to leap forwards to where you already know how to be a nuclear sub dude.
Moving on to counter-examples... I'm rather happy that they knocked me out to take out my wisdom teeth. I think it's perfectly reasonable and appropriate to wish that a schedule of rabies shots were over with already (I think it's perfectly fine to wish that a single shot was over with already). Likewise for any other experience characterized primarily by physical discomfort (this can be taken arbitrarily far, even to torture). I'd actually argue that you've got a rather serious problem if you find yourself savoring such experiences. Is psychic discomfort so different? It seems like you're thinking Job should have said
I also note that, given the choice, we very often do choose to forgo conscious experience in order to get through an unhappy situation or to hurry along (experientially) a good outcome. I'm not just talking about anesthesia here - kids will sometimes go to bed early on Christmas Eve because they can't wait for Christmas morning. Sleep in general is interesting here, as anyone who isn't scraping by on as little sleep as possible is guilty of sacrificing conscious hours in order to improve the quality of their remaining time.
I'm making assumptions about other things that you believe here, but why is it so much worse to wish that a stretch of lived time wasn't being experienced than it is to act in a way that diminishes the amount of total time one experiences? Presumably you don't think that people who smoke cigarettes are sinning by doing so. Knowing what we do about smoking's harms, surely that can only be construed as "wishing away a part of your God-given life" in exchange for a better quality of life in the present - it's just that the wished-away part comes from the end. Likewise for any other habits we have that contribute to shorter average lifespans (not exercising as much as we ought, not taking vitamins, and arguably even something like going skiing).
To take a stab at theology, I think there's a difference between Job continuing to worship God and Job wishing that the part of his life where everything goes wrong was over. Early on, Job curses the day he was born (immediately after expressing trust in God, so the two are distinct) - he's clearly expressing a wish not to be experiencing what he's experiencing. But it's never indicated (that I can see) that he's sinning by doing so. The only thing he's rebuked for at the end is half-questioning whether or not God was justified in putting him through all of that. One can take a lesson about the wrongness of suicide, or about letting present circumstances determine how you view your life as a whole, but reacting to unpleasant circumstances by regretting the necessity of having to live them seems to me to be presented as a perfectly appropriate thing to do. Certainly we can't be expected to positively affirm these parts of our lives - "thank you, sir, may I have another?" would not have been an appropriate thing for Job to say.
Ignore the "it seems like you're thinking Job should have said" at the end of my second paragraph. My "thank you, sir, may I have another?" joke got turned into a paragraph at the end.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're taking at least what I intended to say and what I think I said, and running with it to a severe extreme. I'm not talking about short-term things like spending time waiting in lines at grocery stores when you could be out wildly chasing your dreams or anything like that. There's a difference between choosing to be knocked out for a few hours to get your wisdom teeth out and bemoaning how much you hate your life through four years of grad school. While those four years will serve their purpose of getting you your advanced degree and associated benefits, it's wasteful to approach them from the mindset that you're burning up a large period of your life in order to do so. It's a general optimism thing, Billy. I can either adopt a suffering mentality or I can try to make the most of it, or I can change where I am. Also, I don't think most of us find ourselves in fabular Joblike circumstances.
Sure, I was giving extreme and obvious examples for effect and to illustrate the general principle, but I think the general principle is true. Choosing to be miserable for some long period of time in order to secure some very important goal at some point in the future is perfectly legitimate. One expects that this was the general view of those who endured long and extremely uncomfortable sea voyages to the American colonies (and later to the United States), that being a period of time comparable to your two months.
I'm sure you've got a better handle on Job than I do, but I've never seen it as only teaching something about we should treat others who find themselves in Job's position. It always struck me as also showing an appropriate response to unpleasant circumstances which must necessarily be coped with. The Bible also has a tendency to use extreme examples to convey general life lessons, and one lesson in Job is that it's not a personal failing to find part of one's life unpleasant, or even not worth living.
By all means, try to make the most of it, but the fact of the matter is that it's really, really hard for people to change their attitudes. If it remains the case that you're actively not enjoying this part of your life, that doesn't mean that you were wrong to choose this path or that you're not trying hard enough to make the most of it. Your position seems to me to be double-edged - it's wonderfully convenient advice for a naturally happy person like me (I'm doing something right by never wanting to 'fast-forward'), but it also means that people who can't help but adopt 'a suffering mentality' are doing something wrong - you're assigning people far too much agency with respect to their mental states. It's rather like telling someone with clinical depression that his inability to see the bright side of even everyday situations means that he's doing something wrong. Yes, there's a possible change to his attitude that would make him better off, but it's not a moral failing (you can't say that he "should" change his attitude, because ought implies can). The attitude is wasteful in the sense that if he had a different attitude he would be happier, but to me 'wasteful' implies that he's not stuck with the attitude, which he largely is. It's not wasteful for me to spend about 1/3 of my time sleeping because I'm nearly helpless to do otherwise.
True. I do have some experience dealing with clinically depressed people who to a large degree seem unable to change their mental state, and you bring up an excellent point. Recall though that I generally consider this blog to be a public forum for my personal thoughts, as if I were writing a journal to myself and putting it up on a billboard, rather than universal advice that I would expect the world at large to follow without exception. It would follow that my thoughts and conclusions would make more sense for like-minded people, albeit unintentionally.
It also bears mentioning that your position -- that a necessary time of patient suffering to bring about a worthwhile outcome is a good thing -- is almost certainly more theologically and biblically sound than my thought here. This post was partially an emotional one because I don't enjoy the sensation of waking up and dreading the majority of my waking hours.
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