So Many Unessentials

We often begin new seasons with new plans and purposes _ but the months move by, and we look back and wonder how they could have gone so suddenly and soon. Only another day or two and this year will be half over, and already the sun is again receding to the south. Only a little longer and school will begin again. Only a little longer and we shall be looking back again on another summer season.

Always there is less time left _ a fact we sometimes face with frustration because we are so busy _ too busy sometimes to think what we are busy about. Why are we so busy when we work fewer hours than those who have gone before? Why are we so busy when machines perform so many services? Are we busier than our grandparents who had fewer conveniences, fewer services _ and also fewer unessentials?

Are we busier than those who personally processed all their winter food, than those who sewed and churned and milked and mended _ than those who cut down tress and squared up logs, and planted and hoed and harvested with simple tools?

Are we busier than pioneer and pilgrim parents, who, with all they did, yet somehow found time for some of the real essentials? Could it be that we have enslaved ourselves with too many unessentials?

It seems sometimes we work so hard at leisure _ so hard at entertaining ourselves _ and load our lives with the impediment of paraphernalia. (The boy with the bent pin, the worm, and the willow pole has all but passed!)

And we work so hard at social situations. As one eminent writer wrote: “The man who has made his mark is caught up in the social machine, (which) so cunningly contrived, passes him from cylinder to cylinder, from roller to roller, … from dinner to dinner, and, each day that passes, flattens him out a little more.” ¹

This doesn’t mean that we would wish to return to primitive times. The conveniences and services we have are a boundless blessing. But can we recapture some things we seem to have lost _ and avoid letting unessentials enslave us?

Can we resolve somewhat to simplify, and make a new appraisal of what we really consider essential, with a little more of living, a little less of mere mechanics, a little less time on the treadmill, a little less of meaningless motions.

Heaven help us to use well the short and precious seasons _ as time moves to the endless events of eternity.