76/100 Leisure

76. Leisure

"Time was is past—thou canst not it recall;

Time is thou hast—employ the portion small;

Time future is not, and may never be;

Time present is the only time for thee."

Spare moments are the gold-dust of time—the portion of life most fruitful in good or evil. When gathered up and pressed into use important results flow from thence; when neglected they are gaps through which temptation finds a ready entrance. They are a treasure when rightly used, but a terrible curse when abused. There are three obligations resting upon us in regard to the use and application of time. There is the duty to ourselves, in the care of our happiness, our improvement, and providing for our necessities; the duty to those dependent upon ourselves, and to society; and, lastly, our accountability to God, who bestows upon us this valuable gift, not without its being accompanied with the greatest inducements and the strongest and most cogent motives to improve it to advantage in these different respects.

A celebrated Italian was wont to call his time his estate; and it is true of this, as of other estates of which the young come into possession, that it is rarely prized till it is nearly squandered, and then, when life is fast waning, they begin to think of spending the hours wisely, and even of husbanding the moments. But habits of idleness, listlessness, and procrastination once firmly fixed can not be suddenly thrown off, and the man who has wasted the precious hours of life's seed-time finds that he can not reap a harvest in life's Autumn. The value of time is not realized. It is the most precious thing in all the world; the only thing of which it is a virtue to be covetous, and yet the only thing of which all men are prodigal. Time is so precious that there is never but one moment in the world at once, and that is always taken away before another is given.

It is astonishing what can be done in any department of life when once the will is fired with a determination to use the leisure time rightly. Only take care to gather up your fragments of leisure time, and employ them judiciously, and you will find time for the accomplishment of almost any desired purpose. Men who have the highest ambition to accomplish something of importance in this life frequently complain of a lack of leisure. But the truth is, there is no condition in which the chances of accomplishing great results are less than in that of leisure. Life is composed of an elastic material, and wherever a solid piece of business is removed the surrounding atmosphere of trifles rushes in as certainly as the air into a bottle when you pour out its contents. If you would not have your hours of leisure frittered away on trifles you must guard it by barriers of resolution and precaution as strong as are needed for hours of study and business.

The people who, in any community, have done the most for their own and the general good are not the wealthy, leisurely people who have nothing to do, but are almost uniformly the overworked class, who seem well-nigh swamped with cares, and are in a paroxysm of activity from January to December. Persons of this class have learned how to economize time, and, however crowded with business, are always found capable of doing a little more; and you may rely upon them in their busiest season with far more assurance than upon the idle man. It is much easier for one who is always exerting himself to exert himself a little more for an extra purpose than for him who does nothing to get up steam for the same end. Give a busy man ten minutes in which to write a letter, and he will dash it off at once; give an idle man a day, and he will put it off till to-morrow or next week. There is a momentum in an active man which of itself almost carries him to the mark, just as a very light stroke will keep a hoop going when a smart one was required to set it in motion.

The men who do the greatest things achieved on this globe do them not so much by fitful efforts as by steady, unremitting toil—by turning even the moments to account. They have the genius of hard work—the most desirable kind of genius. The time men often waste in needless slumber, in lounging, or in idle visits, would enable them, were it employed, to execute undertakings which seem to their hurried and worried life to be impossible. Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which, nevertheless, will make, at the end of life, no small deduction from the sum total.

Time, like life, can never be recalled. It is the material out of which all great workers have secured a rich inheritance of thoughts and deeds for their successors. It has been written, "The hours perish, and are laid to our charge." How many of these there are upon the records of the past! How many hours wasted, worse than wasted in frivolous conversation, useless employment—hours of which we can give no account, and in which we benefited neither ourselves nor others! There are few such hours in the busiest lives, but they make up the whole sum in the lives of many. Many live without accomplishing any good; squander their time away in petty, trifling things, as if the only object in life were to kill time, as if the earth were not a place for probation, but our abiding residence. We do not value time as we should, but let many golden hours pass by unimproved. We loiter during the day-time of life, and ere we know it the night draws near "when no man can work." Oh, hours misspent and wasted! How we wish we could live them over again!

It requires no small degree of effort to resolutely employ one's time so as to allow none of it to go to waste. There are a thousand causes tending to the loss of time, and any one who imagines that they would do great things if they only had leisure are mistaken. They can find time if they only set about doing it. Complain not, then, of your want of leisure. Rather thank God that you are not cursed with leisure, for a curse it is in nine cases out of ten. What, if to achieve some good work which you have deeply at heart, you can never command an entire month, a week, or even a day? Shall you, therefore, bid it an eternal adieu, and fold your arms in despair? The thought should only the more keenly spur you on to do what you can in this swiftly passing life of yours. Endeavor to compass its solution by gathering up the broken fragments of your time, rendered more precious by their brevity.

Where they work much in gold the very dust of the room is carefully gathered up for the few grains of gold that may thus be saved. Learn from this the nobler economy of time. Glean up its golden dust, economize with tenfold care those raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and bits of hours, so valueless singly, so inestimable in the aggregate, and you will be rich in leisure. Rely upon it, if you are a miser of moments, if you hoard up and turn to account odd minutes and half-hours and unexpected holidays, the five-minute gaps while the table is spreading, your careful gleanings at the end of life will have formed a colossal and solid block of time, and you will die wealthier in good deeds harvested than thousands whose time is all their own.

It has been written that "he who toys with time trifles with a frozen serpent, which afterwards turns upon the hand which indulged the sport, and inflicts a deadly wound." There are many persons who sadly realize this in their own lives. When age with its frosts of years has come their reflections can not be otherwise than of the saddest kind as they ponder over wasted time, the hours they spent in a worse than foolish manner. Death often touches with a terrible emphasis the value of time. But, alas! the lesson comes too late. It is for the living wisely to consider the end of their existence, to reflect on the possibilities of life, to resolve to waste no time in idleness, but to be up and doing in a manner befitting one who lives here a life preparatory simply to another and better existence.