Alltag

der Alltag eben
teenager edition

It seems to me that my life, since I stopped getting a regular paycheck (which coincided with the start of the recent recession and our moving to Bloomington), has been a series of experiments--a continual attempt at refining the art of Everyday Life, of finding the most productive ways to spend the time of my life.  Of course, you're probably saying to yourself, only a "lucky" few, with time on their hands, have the luxury to ponder questions like this.  The majority of people, instead, are so caught up in their daily grind that it may appear to them that even to raise this as a central question is an expression of unconscious arrogance. Well, maybe.  Or maybe it is just that it would be better if more people were in a position to raise it.  In any case, I will attempt to describe what everyday life means to me.

To begin with, the concept of life is bound up with the passage of time.  To help better visualize it, we humans conveniently carve it up into units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on.  Our life is made up of repetitive daily routines, which we go through mostly on autopilot.  We spend a large chunk (about a third) of the 24-hour daily cycle in sleep, during which time we are mainly unconscious.  Another third we devote to making money in order to sustain our lifestyle in the society we live in.  The time we spend in this pursuit is usually not at our own command.  The last third we devote to various of life's maintenance tasks, such as shopping, cooking, eating, bathing, maintaining relationships, leisure activities, and so on.  Our daily routines are so well structured and deeply ingrained in us through habit that we can easily lose sight of the fact that it is our life that we are "spending", those hours and days, which never return.

The expression of "spending" time is curious, though I think rather apt.  (German, with its tendency for precision, has a different word for spending money, ausgeben, than for spending time, verbringen.)  We all have, as it were, a limited amount of the "stuff" deposited into our own metaphysical checking account on the day of our birth.  The amount in the bank has, alas, only one direction to go, down--and it is drawn down with each day's passing.  When the account is depleted, one ceases to be alive.  There is a website, called the Death Clock, which will project the date of your death given information you input, with a countdown clock displaying the number of seconds remaining--a friendly reminder, as the website says, that life is slipping away, second by second.  There is no more graphic a reminder of our impending death as being confronted by The Ticktock of the Death Clock. (The prediction provided is based on a very simple calculation and is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so take it with a big pinch of salt.  All the same, we each have an accurate death clock, even if we don't know the date.)

As I am unemployed, my concern is with how to conduct myself during the approximate 8 hours of "work" time each day.  Again, German makes a distinction between "to work" (arbeiten) as at a job and "to occupy oneself with or to be engaged in something" (sich mit etwas beschäftigen).  What one occupies oneself with varies at different stages of one's life--prior to the first 2-3 decades, in acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the life ahead, while in midlife, in establishing oneself in the societal structures one finds oneself in, or in bringing up the next generation as the case may be.  Then there comes a time when one begins to wonder whether there is anything else that one would like to do, apart from what one has been doing for the past 20-40 years, while there is still time.  For me, it is not about seeking novel experiences, which frequently populate people's so-called Bucket Lists, but about learning something new and acquiring new skills, not necessarily with the aim of returning to the work force, but instead expanding one's mind.  My choice about how to spend my time is to spend it in study.  There are always certain interests, which I'm pursuing, which engage my time and intellect and mildly challenge my dispositions and physical ability.  Thanks to Kirk, I've been able to pursue a studious life, relatively worry-free, these past four years.  This is not to say that things won't change in the future.  But until then I'll try to make the best of the time I have, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

„Arbeiten, um zu leben, und lebe nicht für die Arbeit.”