Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson

Author:Richard Swenson [Swenson, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-05-15T08:48:00+00:00

INTERRUPTIONS AND JUNK MAIL

Nearly all of us are caught scratching our heads about this mystery of having so little time in an era of so many conveniences and such vaunted efficiency. How can this be?

What did we do with all our time before we had traffic lights, stalled interstates, telephones and busy signals, televisions, interruptions, junk mail, committee meetings, and cluttered desks? What did we do with our time before we spent it shopping for things we don't need? What did we do with our time before we had to learn how to operate, on average, twenty thousand different pieces of equipment?

Is it possible the time was used for things more inherently valuable than commuter traffic, busy telephones, and junk mail? Is it possible the time was spent on things physically challenging instead of mentally frustrating? Is it possible the time was used for conversing, for serving, for resting, for praying?

Trite, we get to places faster-hut we have more places to go. We have devices to help us clean-hut we have more things stuffed into more square footage to clean. Hasn't the lighthulh given us more time because now we can plan activities during the evening that were previously limited to daylight hours? Yes. The lighthulh has given us more capacity to he busy, to produce, and to fill tip schedules in the evening-when before all we could do was sit around the table and read or sit by the fire and read or sit with family and friends and visit until it was time to go to bed.

Let's revisit the Third World. Here we find no televisions, no shopping malls, no traffic lights, no telephones, no cluttered desks, no junk mail. So what do people do with their time? It exists for them as margin. Some of their time is used for work-the physical work of growing food, which is good for the body and spirit. Some of their time is used for visiting the marketplace, which is good for community. A good portion of their time is for leisure. Time to watch the kids play or the donkeys bray. Or to talk to the neighbor. Or to sleep.

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