Make Time Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dicken’s wrote, “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” What does it mean to live in the Past, the Present, and the Future? What lessons do they teach, and how are these lessons shut out? That’s what I’m interested in exploring, and I’m gonna explore this idea through a dialogue.

The following is a conversation between a monk (M) and a student (S).

M: A wise person lives in the Past, the Present, and the Future all at once.

S: Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. How can I live anywhere but the present?

M: You’re taking my words too literally. What I mean is that the wise person understands the Effects of Time on their actions, and by doing so, they make Time their friend, not their enemy.

S: What do you mean they understand the Effects of Time on their actions, and how do they make Time their friend? What does that mean?

M: Time closes the gap between the way things are and the way they should be. Time reaps every seed you sow. If you water trees all day, eventually you’ll have a lot of fruit. In this case, you’ve made Time your friend. If you chop trees down all day, eventually you’ll starve yourself of oxygen. And so, in this case, you’ve made Time your enemy. A wise person understands the Effects of Time on their actions and so befriends Time.

S: OK, so how do I understand the Effects of Time on my actions?

M: Understanding the Effects of Time on your actions actually occurs naturally. We call that process Learning. So the question isn’t /how do you learn/, but rather, /what’s stopping you from learning/? If the process is natural, you must have constructed some barriers against it.

S: Well, what /is/ stopping me from learning?

M: There are two barriers to learning, but the best way to understand them is to first understand the two conditions necessary for learning to take place: sincerity and contradiction.

S: Can you explain them both for me?

M: Yeah, the first condition necessary for learning is sincerity. Sincerity is when you do what you genuinely want to do.

S: And why’s that necessary for learning?

M: In order for your understanding of the world to improve, you have to test your own knowledge, and the only time you’re /actually/ testing your own knowledge is when you act sincerely. For example, think about these two scenarios. In the first scenario, you really wanna go to the mall, but you’ve never been there before. So you try and find your way there, using your own knowledge of the city. Now, in the second scenario, your friend jumps in your car and says, “let’s go to the mall.” You’ve never been there before, and you don’t really wanna go, but you agree. So they start giving you directions. In this case, you’re acting on their knowledge. In which scenario do you think you’ll learn better?

S: The first for sure. The one where I sincerely want to go to the mall and act on my own knowledge.

M: Exactly. In the first scenario, because you actually wanna learn how to get to the mall, you put your own knowledge to the test. And because you’re testing your own knowledge, you’re more mindful of the right and wrong turns that you take. But in the second scenario, you don’t really care about learning the directions. Instead, you rely on the knowledge of your friend. And because you’re relying on someone else’s knowledge, you’re not testing your own knowledge. And because you’re not testing your own knowledge, you won’t really learn anything. So your understanding of the world improves through testing your own knowledge, and the only time we test our own knowledge is when we act sincerely.

S: OK, that makes sense. Can you explain the second condition for me?

M: The second condition necessary for learning is contradiction. Contradiction is information that falsifies your understanding, or in other words, it’s proof that you’re wrong. Remember, when you act sincerely, you’re putting your own knowledge to the te...