How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
I THE DAILY MIRACLE
"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage.Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuriesas well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow'salways in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of hismoney. Excellent flat--half empty! Always looks as if he'd hadthe brokers in. New suit--old hat! Magnificent necktie--baggytrousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass--bad mutton, or Turkishcoffee--cracked cup! He can't understand it. Explanation simplyis that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it! I'dshow him--"
So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in oursuperior way.
We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride ofthe moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to liveon such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondencewhose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a dailyorgan, a battle raged round the question whether a woman can existnicely in the country on L85 a year. I have seen an essay, "How tolive on eight shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "Howto live on twenty-four hours a day." Yet it has been said that time ismoney. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal morethan money. If you have time you can obtain money--usually. Butthough you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the CarltonHotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or thecat by the fire has.
Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. Itis the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible;without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, anaffair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up inthe morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-fourhours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It isyours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singularcommodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as thecommodity itself!
For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And noone receives either more or less than you receive.
Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracyof wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by evenan extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitelyprecious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never bewithheld from you. Mo mysterious power will say:--"This man is a fool,if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter."It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected bySundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get intodebt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.
I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not?
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you haveto spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of yourimmortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highesturgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Yourhappiness--the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends!--depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-date as they are, are not full of "How to live on a given income of time,"instead of "How to live on a given income of money"! Money is farcommoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is justabout the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross heaps.
If one can't contrive to live on a certain income of money, one earns alittle more--or steals it, or advertises for it. One doesn't necessarilymuddle one's life because one can't quite manage on a thousand poundsa year; one braces the muscles and makes it guineas, and balances thebudget. But if one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hoursa day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one doesmuddle one's life definitely. The supply of time, though gloriouslyregular, is cruelly restricted.
Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say "lives,"I do not mean exists, nor "muddles through." Which of us is free fromthat uneasy feeling that the "great spending departments" of his dailylife are not managed as they ought to be? Which of us is quite surethat his fine suit is not surmounted by a shameful hat, or that in attendingto the crockery he has forgotten the quality of the food? Which of us isnot saying to himself--which of us has not been saying to himself all hislife: "I shall alter that when I have a little more time"?
We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had,all the time there is. It is the realisation of this profound and neglectedtruth (which, by the way, I have not discovered) that has led me to theminute practical examination of daily time-expenditure.