Priorities

As a father of three, I used to tell childless couples that no experience is as life-changing as bringing a baby into your life. I had been born into a stable family, moved in and out of schools for a quarter of a century; I had succeeded and failed, both as a student and as a teacher; I had left my native country, been forced out of my chosen profession, and lived in cities and on farms; I had lived alone and with a family I had helped create, then left it to rebuild my sense of who I was. Yet I felt that the most decisive change in all of that was when I became responsible for another human being.

All people must constantly re-evaluate what they are doing. Is it important or not? Does it matter? Can I be doing something more meaningful and rich at this stage of life, even in this moment?

Setting priorities has become trickier. Freed from paid work, a person in my privileged position can (within limits often imposed from outside) choose how to spend each day, even whether to get out of bed in the morning. It becomes much easier to see how actions are the result of conscious choices.

Priorities are the result of playing off what has to be done against what a person wants to do. I am always aware of the necessary tasks in life. Unless I want to see the house fall apart, I do the cooking, the shopping, and the cleaning; I get Catherine to her appointments and spend quality time with her.

Of course, there are times when something that has to be done – going shopping with Catherine, for example – keeps me from doing what I want to do. Being in that situation usually makes me change my priorities temporarily.

Then there are the distractions of the Internet. I have a Twitter account, a Facebook account, and one newspaper feed, from the Washington Post. Just looking at the headlines from these three sources could take me more than an hour every day. Reading the most significant articles behind the headlines could eat up another hour or two.

Writers are skillful procrastinators and masters of rationalization. It can sometimes feel like a hollow claim when I say I to want to read meaningful literature and to write. I can find all kinds of reasons to do something else. And spending time on line can be an excuse not to read or write.

Just today I learned that Nike is no longer making golf equipment. I was also encouraged to test my knowledge of European geography, and to watch a video of an elephant swimming in India. All these things diverted me into a new world of curiosity and transported me beyond the normal limits of procrastination and rationalization.

Without looking for it, I also ran across news from the entertainment industry, highlights of the lives and exploits of people whose names I did not recognize, from sports or television programs. I receive posts of these items over and over again, so much so that I can barely see more meaningful news of the day. They remind me of Thoreau saying “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

This morning, the Post offered me more than twenty fresh, mainly time-sensitive articles. Besides the normal diet of politics (more than half the articles), they included a look at new weapons being developed by Russia, an examination of confession videos in China, a warning about imminent flooding of cities on the east coast of the United States, and a local Washington story about the reduction of late-night public transit service. Consider how much time would be required to read even two of these articles.

At my age, saving time is an ongoing priority. Some things are worth the time, but others increasingly are not. No more than anybody else can I always be involved in my top priority item. And I must constantly choose how much time I will give to trivia and ephemera. There are times when I have treated the issue like the Gordian knot and just cut the cord completely by going off line. I’m old enough that the option always seems reasonable.