I broke my flux capacitor

Or don't forget that time is finite

I feel like I’ve experienced this month at 88 mph with a 1.21 gigawatt battery firmly lodged in my anus.The tingle was not as fun as I expected, and the battery was sizeable.

For some reason the concept of time has come up a lot for me over the past few weeks. In conversations with clients. In books I’ve been reading. In the dreaded ticking of my kitchen clock, constantly reminding me of the seconds I’ll never get back. There’s one. There’s another. Oh, one more. A glaring disc of memento mori that’s just a little too high for me to reach and smash off the wall

I have foolishly begun the task of reading Martin Heidegger’s “Being and Time”. Some of it is interesting. A lot of it feels like self aggrandising ego masturbation. I’ve always believed that good philosophy should be accessible. This is not.

Unlike Descartes, who tells us that the observer and the object (i.e. the world) are two distinctly separate entities, Heidegger proposes the idea that being is inseparable from the objective world. We are through the act of being present in something tangible.

What makes being so visceral is that it exists within a finite stretch of time. Time finds meaning in death, he says. This reminded me a lot of the stoic idea of memento mori, which means remember that you are going to die. There’s nothing maudlin or nihilistic about this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

To remember that we are finite empowers us with the agency to live fully. If we knew that tomorrow was our final day, would we look back and be satisfied with the person that we had become? Or would we feel regret at missed opportunities or forgotten endeavours?

There’s something deeply important that I want to delve into around the way the Stoics viewed personal worth and value, and that’s that it’s not about “stuff”. They’ve discarded this hedonistic notion that our merit is discerned by the magnificence of our home or how many slaves we have polishing our mosaics. Fuck your sauna and your cold water plunge pool. Your togas are shit, mate.

True value comes from the distillation of our character. What have you put out into the world that’s been of benefit to the greater whole? How have you conducted yourself, and in what ways have you alleviated the suffering of others? What will you leave behind in the minds of those you’ve navigated this life with?

It’s in these questions that we find true wealth. Material satisfaction is a fickle mistress who will turn her back on you in an instant, and what happiness she brings is fragile and fleeting.

In his book Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes that he's fortunate not due to his palaces or the treasury. Sure, his wife had silken and embroidered robes and they possessed silver goblets and emeralds the size of a dog’s head, but to Marcus the true measure of his wealth was that whenever he saw someone in need of help, he could provide it.

Our time is finite, and it goes really fucking fast when we’re not looking. So let’s stop spending it on material pursuits. Let’s get rich, instead, in our character.

Much love
David

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