Seeking
for The Best Way To Use Our Energies
Carlos
Cardoso Aveline
While facing the tensions of
daily life, we may feel we “have no time” to study sacred or philosophical topics
and meditate upon them.
Whenever such an idea occurs, it
is a safe indication that we must revise our list of priorities and stop losing
undue amounts of time with issues whose real importance is scarce.
We know we are not immortals -
at least from the point of view of physical life -, and wasting time with trivial
or passing topics is tantamount to deluding ourselves with the idea that we
will live for ever.
An old book of Jewish prayers
makes a sober warning and reproduces a few sentences from Hillel, which deserve
frequent examination:
“He who aggrandizes his name,
loses his name; he who does not increase his knowledge, decreases it; he who
does not seek to acquire wisdom, forfeits his life; and he who makes unworthy
use of the crown of learning is wasting his powers. (…) If I am not for myself,
who will be for me? Yet, if I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now,
when?” [1]
Elsewhere the book quotes
these words from the same thinker:
“... And do not say, ‘When I have
leisure I will study’; you may never have the leisure.”[2]
Every minute lost is a minute
gone for good.
One must take practical
measures to create a habit of seeking for wisdom in daily life, while time is
still available. Rabbi Tarphon said:
“The day is short, the work is
much, the laborers are slothful, and the Master is urgent.” [3]
In order to make a wise use of
time, one must remember it constitutes a natural resource of decisive
importance. It is correct therefore to eliminate from our personal agenda any priorities
which are in conflict with our main goal.
Roman philosopher Lucius
Seneca wrote that life is not short, but it may seem to be not long enough if
we lose too much time with topics of
small importance. Indeed, one of the secrets to a good long walk is not to take
too much luggage, and keep to the fundamentals.
NOTES:
[1] “Union Prayer Book
for Jewish Worship”, Part I, Newly Revised Edition, The Central Conference of
American Rabbis, Cincinnati, USA, 1953, 396 pp., see p. 166.
[2] “Union Prayer Book
for Jewish Worship”, Part I, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1953,
see p. 168.
[3] “Union Prayer Book
for Jewish Worship”, 1953, p. 169.
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The above article was published in
October 2017 at our blog in The Times of Israel.
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