Gone in Sixty Seconds

The race to use every moment for all it's worth.

NOTE: This is the final article in a series analyzing Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.” You may read the introductory article here.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run

It is truly amazing the things people will say to you when you are pregnant: from comments about your weight to declarations that, “You’ll never sleep again!”, they can be rather unhelpful to the woman with child. But of all the remarks I received during those nine months, the one that affected me most was a casual comment on Facebook: “I guess you won’t have time to write now!”

I had come to motherhood later than some. I was already thirty-two years old at the start of pregnancy, a full decade beyond the other women in birthing class. There were disadvantages to this state of affairs, but one thing those years without a child gave me was the chance to attempt a career in international relations, leave that career, and start a new one in writing.

My great hope during those nine months of expectation was that I would be able to continue writing after my son’s birth, maybe not at the same pace as before, but at least in some fashion. I prepared myself mentally to be as flexible as necessary to make this happen, because I thought I would be a better person and mother if I had that outlet for my thoughts.

Of course, there is nothing that can truly prepare one for parenthood. My son’s birth was drawn out and punishing. It took weeks for my body to recover. Even as I was more exhausted than I had ever been in my life, feeling like I needed a full year’s getaway at a spa resort, I was thrust into the extended period of sleep deprivation that is the first few months of a child’s life. Then when my son was a month old, the entire world shut down in unprecedented fashion due to the Covid pandemic. There would be no babysitters—indeed, no visitors of any kind.

Unfortunately, I had not managed to complete the last volume of my Chronicle of Maud trilogy while pregnant. There are so many tasks involved with readying one’s home for a baby, not to mention the medical appointments that increased along with my abdominal circumference. I desperately wanted to finish that project and not end up in a George R.R. Martin type situation. But if I had any free time, I longed to spend it sleeping. I was so tired. So very, very tired.

I soon realized that if I was going to remain a writer, I would have to skip the nap. So, I persevered through exhaustion, pushing my body to the limit, and by God’s grace I finished that book. This is the attitude I have needed to sustain me over the past five years. Gone are the days when I could spend hours procrastinating, musing, and otherwise indulging in the “writing process.” I often have only an hour to write at a time, so I have learned to write an article in one hour. Often this has meant writing it in my head while I am attending to other things, then typing it out during the free period.

If there is one thing motherhood has taught me, it is how to fill a minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.

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Whether we are parents or not, all of us are short on time, because all of us are mortal. For those of us who feel a continual drive to make the world a better place, this is a true curse. We want to be everywhere, do everything, help everyone. We devise ways to increase productivity, wringing every moment for all it’s worth. We are multitaskers, and the real danger is that in multitasking we will neglect to do any task particularly well or be fully present in any moment.

Efficiency is the watchword of capitalist societies. This is not to say that North Americans and Europeans never have leisure time, but even our leisure tends to be analyzed for productivity enhancement.

How else do we explain the modern travel industry? Yes, it is an industry ready to sell us every product that might improve our journey, every tour combination that will maximize sites seen and photos taken. The stereotypical American in Europe spends a day in each of the major cities, conquering the whole place in a fortnight, a feat beyond that of Napoleon. I am not that bad, but I do plan each trip down to the hour. After all, we have distance to cover.

Our obsession with productivity leads us to devalue objects, institutions, and people. Anything that is a dead weight on the system, a drain upon efficiency, a gum in the works must be allowed to fade away or else be destroyed outright. This obsession might make us richer, but it is unclear if it makes us better or happier.

At thirty-eight years old, I have advanced about halfway toward the average life expectancy of an American woman. I admit that fact terrifies me. In some ways, I feel as old as the earth, but in others I feel I am just beginning. Then there is the terrible state of affairs in our world, which needs a remedy now, now, now!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about “the fierce urgency of now,” a phrase that was often borrowed by Barack Obama during his campaigning days. There is a fierce urgency within my very flesh: a recognition that my time is short and the work is great. I want to do so much before I die, and since I do not know when I will meet my end, I long to fill every minute with more than sixty seconds’ distance run. It is not enough to be enough. I must be more.

Kipling has therefore captured the spirit of his capitalist society in this couplet. Not that capitalists alone feel a need to get things done, but they do tend to have more anxiety about it. I suspect that, given the propensities I have mentioned, my personal task is as much to be still as it is to move. I am no massive time waster. I indulge in few hobbies and work to maximize every activity. But is this making me better or happier?

The Jewish and Christian Scriptures tell us that the Creator God wrote a principle of rest into the universe, requiring that his people take one day a week to cease normal activities and contemplate spiritual realities. In a society like ours, this can seem like the most ridiculous of God’s commands. We might grant him a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, but certainly not an entire day. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)¹ So said Jesus Christ, who understood the human mind better than anyone. We are better workers and better people when we devote time to rest.

My husband likes to say that there is a difference between doing nothing and wasting time. I suspect that the secret to the good life lies somewhere within that distinction. We busy ourselves with everything except that which is most necessary for our functioning.

Many days, I read about God and write about God, but fail to devote significant time to prayer. While I do not think it would help to berate myself on this point, I suspect my life would be better and happier if I focused a bit more on the prayer and less on the writing. Consider the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

“Do you want to know what you should busy yourself with? Over and above daily prayer you need to work — in such a way, though, as to preserve, or rather, to increase your spiritual happiness. Certainly, some kinds of heavy work distract the soul and weary it. All the more reason for you to have a sense of your own weakness and to have humility of heart.”²

Well said, Bernard. Yes, we must do work “over and above daily prayer,” but daily prayer must be our foundation, and “spiritual happiness” must be the end for which we strive in all things.

We may all be bound in fealty to linear time, subject to the unforgiving minute. But there are different ways to cover that distance, and it would be best from time to time to consider whether we are truly pursuing the right ends. For an increase in productivity is not necessarily an increase in virtue, and it is the latter which we must pursue in order to live the good life.

Thanks for coming along for this trip through Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.” Return next week for something entirely different. And yes, I do mean ENTIRELY different.

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PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE:

• “Who was the true heir of Augustine: Luther or Erasmus?” at Credo magazine

1. Unless otherwise stated, all biblical quotations on this site are taken from the 1995 New American Standard Bible, copyright The Lockman Foundation.

2. Bernard of Clairvaux in Letters to the Brethren 21 (PL 184, 321) in Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World, ed. by Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1994) 133-134.