“Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up,” Herzen says. “But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment … Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late.”
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Yet it’s surely no coincidence that hobbies have acquired this embarrassing reputation in an era so committed to using time instrumentally. In an age of instrumentalization, the hobbyist is a subversive: he insists that some things are worth doing for themselves alone, despite offering no payoffs in terms of productivity or profit. The derision we heap upon the avid stamp collector or train spotter might really be a kind of defense mechanism, to spare us from confronting the possibility that they’re truly happy in a way that the rest of us—pursuing our telic lives, ceaselessly in search of future fulfillment—are not.”
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“crossed. Before, time was just the medium in which life unfolded, the stuff that life was made of. Afterward, once “time” and “life” had been separated in most people’s minds, time became a thing that you used—and it’s this shift that serves as the precondition for all the uniquely modern ways in which we struggle with time today.”
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“living in deep time.”
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“You’re obliged to deal with how your experience is unfolding in this moment, to resign yourself to the reality that this is it.”
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
― Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Isaac’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Isaac’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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