Time and the Art of Living

Aside from gearing up for co-op, I've also been reading Time and the Art of Living, by Robert Grudin.  I got the idea from one of Susan's journaling posts.  This is not a book to read quickly.  I keep having to stop and write about what I just read.  I've filled half of one of those thin Moleskine journals in less than a week, and I'm only about a third of the way through the book.  And it's a library book.

Time and the Art of Living is hard to summarize.  The writing itself, which is dense and occasionally quite poetic, is half of the reason I like it.  The other half, of course, is the book's ostensible purpose, which is to enrich one's present by learning to think wisely about time.  And I'll definitely have to buy it so I can mark it up and read it again and again.  Over time.

Right now I'm reading the politics and history section.  I just read this a few minutes ago:  

"The question of whether liberal democracy can recover, out of its own fiber and without global conflict, the spirit and vigor of its own early history, has in effect become the question of whether liberal democracy can endure at all."  (V.10)

Wow.  Now there's a history topic to ponder for a year, or a lifetime.  I pondered it only for about five minutes, because I'm just wanting to find out what all is in this book!

Yesterday I read this:  

"The following exercises may be of some value in sharpening and renewing your sense of time:" 

and I picked:

"Conceive in detail how and where yo wish to  live, and what you wish to know, have, be, in ten years' time." (IV. 18)

I spent a good fifteen minutes just figuring out how old everyone in my family would be and what would be the likely results of the passing of ten years' time.  I found that the next decade (my late forties and early fifties) is likely to be quite eventful, indeed!  My humility was compounded by the fact that I realized how little control I really have over most of it.  But not "conquering the world" doesn't bother me.  I've long ago realized that most people aren't really self-determining, and that I'm not really wise enough to be.  I pray and leave that in God's hands, and try to make the best of what wisdom I have when circumstances suggest that I should be making active decisions.   There will be enough of those to make, most likely.

And not all of Time and the Art of Living is quite so mind boggling.  I came across this passage last night, and simply laughed out loud:

"Every home should have a room, or at least a nook with two chairs, where it is a sin punishable by immediate expulsion to speak of money, business, politics or the state of one's teeth." (IV.29)