JUST HANGIN' AROUND Ever feel like you're wasting time? Who hasn't? But did you ever stop to think about what it means to waste time? To begin with, it's totally subjective. Whatever you say wasting time is, is whatever you say it is. If you express your feelings about it, you're only sharing a particular philosophical point of view. Your own. I've said it before. Everyone is a philosopher. What exactly is your philosophy with regard to wasting time? If you tell me, you're not really telling me what wasting time is. You're telling how you feel about it. Actually describing a waste of time could get really involved. You would have to begin by talking about time itself, what you think it is, how it's supposed to be used and so on. More subjectivity. The more I think about the idea of wasting time, the more I see its similarity to wasting words talking about God. Both are associated with the idea of eternality. If eternity really exists, a state of timelessness, then time does not exist. The two (time and eternity) are mutually exclusive concepts. The purely abstract character of this polarity is readily apparent. You can talk about it till you're blue in the face, but so what? What good does it do? Where does it actually get you? I'll tell you where it gets me. In a mood, a mood that prompts me to conclude that the whole thing is a waste of time. It also (strangely enough) makes me wonder about paleolithic man. Do you think he ever fretted over wasting time? Somehow, I don't think so. Most likely, cave men just did whatever the hell they felt like doing, and if circumstances permitted it, that's just exactly what they did, which brings me to the heart of this lesson: Do what you feel like doing (so long as you're not hurting anyone, including yourself). If you feel like watching re-runs of Hee Haw instead of a program on one of the educational channels, do it. Do not feel like you're wasting your time. If you don't feel like watching educational television, but do it anyway, that would be a waste of time.
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