Marking Time…

There are many circumstances and situations in which we may feel that we are marking time or worse wasting time. There are times when we are waiting for people and appointments when we feel cheated as we think of what we might have done with the time we waste in waiting. There are times of routine travel, of commuting between places when the interval may seem more or less lost.

There are times when we are pressed into pursuits not of our own choosing, on detours from our intended destinations, for example, time spent in making a living at uninteresting routine work while waiting for other work, or while preparing for other pursuits, or time spent by young men in military service when they are eager to settle down to other purposes.

In these unavoidable interruptions, there is often much more than can be salvaged than is sometimes supposed. Wherever a man is, he has his mind with him. Wherever he is, he can think and plan and pursue, mentally at least, constructive purposes. Almost wherever he is he can arrange to read not trash or trivia, but from the best books. It isn’t always so, but it can often be so. Almost wherever a man is, he can write. It takes only simple tools to write and some significant writings have come even from within prison walls. Some interesting and profitable activities have been pursued from the bedsides of shut-ins, by those who couldn’t go out from where they were but who have reached out with what they had, with some wonderfully useful results.

A man can be immobilized without immobilizing his mind. Some of the most successful people have learned what to do with odd moments, with the in-between times that so many of us waste sometimes just sitting, sometimes just waiting, sometimes with impatient pacing. Almost wherever a person is he can find some constructive purpose to pursue, without wasting time in shoddy or trivial or tawdry pursuits.

In a sense we can’t “save” time as we can save water that would otherwise run away. But often when we are diverted from our intended course, we can make time serve as water that runs into a reservoir a reservoir of preparation, of stored knowledge, of acquired skills to be used for a better purpose at a better time and place rather than let it run away.