Two Ways to Spend Time

Time is, ultimately, the only resource that matters. Through it, almost anything can be achieved; without it, nothing can be gained. Time is also imaginary. It is therefore amusing how an imaginary resource is the most important to the human being. Like the similarly illusory but simultaneously very real value of money and currency, time can be spend foolishly or wisely.

There are basically two ways that time is spent; through pursuit of the useful or through the pursuit of the entertaining. Every single action can be categorized according to these two ways.

The first, the pursuit of the useful, is typically thought of as the most productive use of one's time. It is through the pursuit of the useful that a life is 'improved,' although the measure of improvement depends on the person. Things like working, doing chores or simply doing things that makes life function according to the level one desires falls into the first category.

The second, the pursuit of entertainment, is simply the spending of time doing what one likes to do, what amuses one. Through the pursuit of entertainment, one makes life worth living. By spending time in this pursuit, one affirms the reason for one's living.

It is easy to say that one of these pursuits is higher or loftier than the other. However, it would mean that people either live to be useful or to entertain themselves. In this writer's opinion, both do not sound attractive at all. The first suggests that we are no better than industrial robots; the second suggests that we are nothing but hedonists.

As always, there is an interplay, a necessary relationship between the two pursuits. Each of the two pursuits work for the other. The pursuit of the useful creates the resources required to pursue the entertaining. The pursuit of the entertaining creates the motivation by which the useful may be pursued with.

There is also a happy medium when what is useful is also what entertains a person. When this happens, it presents the opportunity of having a good metric of what one's personal ideal is - that which our greatest ambitions point to, consciously or not.

When both pursuits overlap, then that means that one's natural propensities and tendencies lie in the general area of the pursuit. If one finds employment in, say, selling cars and also feels entertained convincing others of the merits of buying a particular car, then one can say that one's personal ideal lies in the general area of convincing others.

Of course, there is more to determining this personal ideal than by seeing this overlap of pursuits, but it is a very good metric otherwise.