2019 Interlude #1 Richard Brautigan

Of the Merits of Thrift Part 4

I suppose when it comes right down to the heart of the matter, the merits of thrift, it is this: use time wisely. Using time wisely has a certain set of meanings that may be as personal as we are individual. I mean this, there are only so many hours in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. It's a question of what it means to use time wisely.

In our world of ever increasing leisure time and diversions, it really is a question of how we spend our time. It's all around us, all the time, and the distractions are so insidious that there cannot be enough words to forewarn us. There are the numerous screens, yes. There are the many hours that can be freely given to the video games, social media and one short video after another on all the outlets designed for our personalized entertainment. I am not free from these, and after I've spend the small hours of the day blindly staring into the screen, I feel a sense of loss that doesn't feel very good.

It's time that has been spent, time that is gone. And it is time that will be never be gained back.

Of the Merits of Thrift Part 3

I blame Henry David Thoreau for just about all of the existential dilemmas that I have ever had. When I was first introduced to Thoreau, of course, it was Walden. I carried a copy of Walden for a number of months in the early years of college. I was in my early 20s, back from a couple of overseas tours with the US Army, and I was learning that there was much less to life than I had been led to believe.

I can still see the tender blossoms of the cherry trees on campus on the fragile March day when I first read Thoreau's words. I would read a chapter at a time. I would read the chapter and then think about it. I would think about it some more, sometimes until it hurt and then I would think about it more. Then, I would read the chapter again. For years, I could quote Walden the way those charlatan-like people can rapid fire a Bible verse at the slightest small talk.

Of the Merits of Thrift Part 2

Only in retrospect is it a blessing to have been through relative poverty. How easy it would be to romanticize the halcyon days of youth when hopeless poor? Those days when money didn't matter, but what did was the experiences of traveling, or studying at university, or just learning about life. Yes, these are great memories, and many of us have them. But it is not right to glorify the hard times and conclude all discussions with the wistful breaths saying, those were the days.

Rather, it's those gained experiences that shape the way we are, the way we think, and perhaps the way we act. In the impoverished days of my youth, I never once felt poor. I was a college student and I worked my way through school the same way all of my classmates did. I worked all sorts of jobs, many of them at the same time. I worked in retail, restaurants, offices. I did temp work like unloading semi trailers or recycling old files for law firms. I even had a brief stint as a street performer. What I learned was this, especially at that particular time of history and my history, it doesn't take very much money to live.

Of the Merits of Thrift

In the study of classical economics, Adam Smith tells us of unlimited human desires overlaid on very limited resources. In that balance between desires and resources, most of our conflicts and problems arise. Aside from the I want, I want, I want or perhaps in our modern condition, iWant, iWant, iWant, there are other concerns entirely.

I have come to understand my position on prosperity and thrift even more fully with age. Over the years I have seen many of my friends take on absurd amounts of debt, liabilities and stresses because they have either wanted something, been told they want something, or have made the decision that having something is more valuable than the time it would take to pay it off.

It is easy to put money in the center of prosperity and thrift, as money is the most tangible thing we all seem to agree upon. And even the words prosperity and thrift invoke the idea of money. And when it comes down to it, we trade all sorts of things, time, morals and life for money. In this way, we have all learned that time is money. Perhaps time is money, and that is something that I never say, never think, nor have I ever believed. In fact, my ideas are the exact opposite: money is time.