Time is money

When you have a job, the saying is trite, but in high school, it is remarkably apt. For us, time is money. Because we don't earn our livings, even if some of us do work a bit, money is used for treats - concerts, travel to a friend's house, afternoon tea at a cafe, gifts. We don't really need to pay attention to what money we have and how we spend it, although it is certainly wise to do so. Our equivalent currency is time. Every activity must be weighed in terms of the time investment. It is expensive to live far from school, because we lose hours in travel. Extra-curricular activities are also expensive. School is a necessary investment, like rent - our lifestyle requires it. Procrastination is spending unwisely on toys and gadgets. When I help somebody with their homework, or something I don't understand, I have given something away - not knowledge, because that never leaves you, or money, because I wouldn't be paid, but the time that I have spent teaching them, which I might have spent on my own work. I choose to make an investment in friendships, because I feel I gain something worthwhile from them. I cannot yet effectively avoid procrastination, but I wish I could, because I know it's a waste. Unlike money, however, we are forced to spend our time rather than save it. It's a little sad to realise, but where money comes and goes, time just goes.

Happiness is finite - or some such thing

It occurred to me today* that global levels of happiness are static. Our parents were probably as happy at our age as we are now. Their parents were similarly content, or if not, their levels of happiness were comparable to some other person of our acquaintance. In fact, a hundred years ago, people would have been as happy as us. And five hundred years ago. And a thousand. And two thousand and three thousand and five thousand and ten thousand and before human history our amount of happiness was identical to our happiness now. Because happiness is about comparison. Things are not as bad as they could be. Within the society I operate, I am successful. And there have always been those who are content with what they have, and those who wish for more.

During the Renaissance, infant mortality rates were higher, lives were shorter, the gap between those with power and those without was larger, and your chance of dying horribly even in the most developed countries was far greater. But, this was the same for everyone. Some people were unlucky, and became poorer or sick, or lost children. Some people were lucky, became richer and had robust healthy families. But this all lay on a continuum of possibility which everyone grew up with, and although the old could remember when times were different, that wasn't real in the way the present world was.

Now, we live longer, safer lives, with rights to greater freedom and individuality (at least in Western nations, I haven't lived in other cultures). Are we happier? I suspect the answer is no. Our worry quota is now filled by fears for the world, rather than fears for our lives, and the threat of unemployment rather than famine. But though our worries are different, we experience them in the same way and to the same degree.The human brain has not evolved the capacity to be happier, or to be more troubled.

I am not certain whether I should be pleased with this. At least it means that in the future we will be as content as we are now. But that raises the question: if we are as happy now as we have ever been, why on earth all these gadgets? As a society, progress does not make us happier. And of course, this question is answered by some of the fundamentals of evolution. We all compete. We compete for wealth, stability, prowess, anything in which we can be demonstrably superior. So if all we had to show off was sticks, then my goodness the stick brandishing that would take place. "Due to startling advances in twig technology", however (to quote Douglas Adams), we are now able to compare our gadgets - our phones, our computers, our mp3s - and don't they have a marvellous number of points of comparison? We can compare colour, size, capacity, dimensions, contents...the possibilities are endless. And by making our comparisons we can decide which qualities are worth keeping, and which are not, and the gadgets themselves undergo a process of evolution. Rather remarkable really.

So, if we retrace our steps from that somewhat extended tangent, we find ourselves again at the question: should we be comforted that we have never and will never be happier? As I am finding more and more lately (which I believe is part of the getting of wisdom), I don't really know. Much as I am disappointed that we have made no great advances, it is comforting to know that our lifestyle cannot really change our experience of life. And that leads to the realisation that since it is possible to be happy with less than we have now, we can afford to get less stuff, and still be content. Which is, all in all, a fairly admirable goal.



*My apologies for the semi-hiatus