Time Well Spent II: A detour for perspective

The first part of this dual post treatise on how to use my time well, ended on a note of concern. I pointed to the danger of relegating great ideas to trite truisms by refusing to grapple with their implications for daily life. This is a very personal concern. I've only been posting for three weeks, yet already, I sense the pernicious temptation to abandon the posture of a curious learner for the "sage on a stage" persona. The tendency to spout out ideas as mere entertainment (if only for an audience of one), abandoning the potent call to ponder and be transformed that they give. Much like using an inherited, hand-knit scarf as a doormat, failing to truly contend with the ideas we discuss is not only improper, it is an insult - to those we are in conversation with and especially to those to whom we owe the ideas.

Yet there are selfish reasons for seeking transformation as well. In one of my favorite quotes, Socrates says:

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Put another way, the reason why we spend so much time examining life, is so that we can live one worth living. To settle for ideas as mere amusement is to cheat ourselves, not just of a better life, but of a life of value at all. That isn't to say that unless one has thoroughly examined every possible way to live, they have no hope of having lived the "right way". This life is far to grand and intricate for anyone to every completely examine it. But I don't think that is what Socrates means. Rather it is the commitment to examination, that makes life worth living. And I see examination as nothing more than a commitment to wrestling with the ideas we come across as they pertain to how we live. Socrates claim is founded on the premise that how we live matters, the choices we make matter. A commitment to choose well, as is in our power, is the only responsible thing to do. And it is from here that the illumination of ideas, learning and knowledge finds purpose. Not as blinking Christmas tree lights, to decorate and entertain, but sturdy lampposts, to guide the way home.

This emphasis on why ideas matter is one place where I think theology has one up on philosophy. I can almost here the humor in how James the Just, a first century Christian theologian, puts it:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

If ideas mean no more than entertainment, we, like the man who looked into the mirror and forgot what he looked like, are probably a little arrogant and definitely wasting our time. I started off this blog with a dictum: I am not nothing, even without my ideas. I add to that another: Ideas matter, because life matters. Contextualized to the last post's discussion on rest and time: ideas on time matter, because how I spend my time matters.