Making Good Use of Time
(Label France -January 2000 N´38)
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/label_France/ENGLISH/DOSSIER/2000/08temps.htmlAt a time when new technology is reducing distance and time, when the pace of our lives is getting faster and more uniform, pushing us to a degree of "activism" and a dispossession of ourselves, the writer Pierre Sansot* takes a moment to make us think about our relation to time and advocates a creative openness to the moment, to the Other, in short, to the world, to find happiness. A real art of living.
Time is not an accident. It is always with us and unmasks us in the way we approach things and our fellow men - and in the way we achieve personal fulfilment. All these are reasons to establish cordial relations with it and make it our ally. But how can we use it intelligently? What traps do we have to avoid? Being unable to cope with the demands of time is one of our most serious failings. I believe I have discovered a mixture of activity and apparent passivity in it. Since I shall insist on the will to consent, not to rush things, sometimes to let them be, it seems to me necessary to overcome any possible misunderstanding.
I am not questioning our initiatives in the three dimensions of our time on earth. Thus the past does not rest in us lethargically. We have to hold on to it, to make it part of our consciousness. When, in old age, we have lost the ability to memorise, the events that we have lived through will leave no trace and it will be as if we had never experienced them.
The future. It opens before us, it dwindles as our plans proceed, sometimes vast, sometimes so restricted that we come up against it. It is because we launch ourselves with some spirit towards what is not yet, that we can enjoy a certain future.
The present? It is assumed to occur by itself without our having anything to do with it. Yet here too, the human being has to co-operate with its coming, to allow it to obtain a place. When we are not paying attention and when suffering from certain illnesses, this being in the present does not take place. We are then, as they say, absent, absent from the world, absent from ourselves. Boredom is sometimes our inability to connect with the world and let ourselves be affected by it.
Listening to the world
Thus, what I am calling into question is not action, but a certain activism that dissipates us, that prevents us from regaining consciousness and savouring happiness, whether small delights or the greatest joys. I have called this "slowness", by which I mean something that must be understood appropriately, not the desire to do nothing but the desire to act in response to what the world offers us.
For example, I could talk about strolling. To stroll is to move on freely and slowly in a busy town, valuing only the wonder of the moment. A woman stroller has something sovereign, something ethereal in her bearing. The curious, alert and darting gaze of a male stroller radiates intelligence and both seem to me equally pleasant to contemplate.
I am thinking of other less visible but perhaps more fundamental attitudes. Thus, listening, showing oneself capable of really taking in what others say. It is not enough to keep one's ears open. It is not easy to forget oneself in this way before an interlocutor. When I manage it, which demands humility, patience and some effort, a kind of wonderful experience occurs. A thought other than my own takes on meaning within me. I do not seek it out, I do not run after it, I do not interpret it from my own first principles. Then, by accepting the lulls, the silences, I am enriched and expanded by an unexpected experience.
I shall cite an apparently much humbler experience. A celebratory meal is not to be hurried. It requires a great many preliminaries. We must inhale it before we sit down to eat, savour it, honour it by the way we dress, adorn it with polite conversation and compliments. Recalling such a situation will lead me to more general remarks which relate to a certain art of living.
If the guest hastily devours the dishes and immediately leaves his host's table, he would be showing ingratitude. I would like, in the same way, for us to pay tribute to all that the world has the goodness to offer us: a smile, a friendly gesture, a sunny wall, the intransigeance of a cliff, the millennial surf of the ocean. Not lingering over these wonders is to fail to give them their due recognition.
I am asking that we linger, that we adopt a less hectic pace whenever beauty or goodness so demands. Provided, of course, that our ability to wonder has not faded. When it dims, the world becomes a meaningless desert that we cross hastily and in despair. We accumulate places, adventures and pleasures as if their sum were to bring us happiness. Yet the essence is revealed only to the attentive, marvelling, respectful gaze. An unfamiliar town has to be tamed, we have to wait for it to accept us, we have to walk around it more than once. This is the tragedy of the hurried tourist who believes he can see everything in a few hours.
It is the same when we are attracted to someone: we should not swoop down on him or her, not entrap him or her, but signal discreetly to the object of our interest and if he or she does not want to understand our signals, give up. If it is real love, we should take the time for it to develop and, since the person to whom we believe we are destined is unfathomable, joyfully feel that it will take years for this understanding to achieve completion.
Alternating rhythms
However, sometimes we have to proceed quickly and then slowness is out of the question. There are emergencies, times when we must provide first aid, when we must commit ourselves at our own risk. Hesitation would be a useful excuse for "passing by". I am not thinking only of emergencies, but of situations where the beauty of the gesture requires speed and panache, where a leisurely pace is not appropriate. Thus some places, some towns, demand to be visited quickly. A superior person, if there is such a thing, would know how to alternate rhythms. He would naturally adjust to the changes of tone and measure of a polyrhythmic world.
I am challenging only the forces that escape us, that are outside us and which constrain us. Whenever someone wants to move quickly in a creative flurry, he or she should not moderate the extent of his or her enthusiasm. But is it still possible to use time in this way? I admit that the rhythms of work, the legitimate concern for social success or simply survival encroach on our freedom. It seems to me, however, that even in the time we do have available we continue to force the pace, to ski downhill time and time again without a thought for the beauty of the landscape, to move on to the next relationship or meeting instead of really devoting ourselves to a few. But I shouldn't be pessimistic, there are so many people who know how to use time in a more human and basically richer way.
A few propositions concerning life in society follow. In terms of education, it is better not to rush the process, to accept that learning requires patience, that it takes trial and error. In town planning, we should know that a town cannot be cut through, that if we speed up traffic flow it will lose what makes it what it is, its soul. In terms of culture, we must abstain from a feverishness that would be spread thinly over too many art forms, preferring to concentrate on what has most to say to us.
This is one way of getting through life more satisfactorily.
-Pierre Sansot (Writer)-
* Pierre Sansot has also taught philosophy and anthropology.
Bibliographical references
• Il vous faudra traverser la vie [You will have to get through life], by Pierre Sansot, pub. Grasset, Paris, 1999.• Du bon usage de la lenteur [Using slowness well], by Pierre Sansot, pub. Payot, Paris, 1998.• Jardins publics [Public Gardens], by Pierre Sansot, pub. Payot, Paris, 1993.
Exhibitions
• "Le Temps, vite" [Time, fast] at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, in Paris, from January 13th to April 17th, 2000.• "L'Empire du Temps, mythes et créations" [The Empire of Time, Myth and Creation] at the Louvre museum, in Paris, from April 14th to July 10th, 2000.
with Victor Hugo 
