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Our culture is obsessed with time – how to use it, how to gain it, how not to waste it. But the roots of that neurosis stretch back long before the invention of management consultants and the BlackBerry. Mankind has been fretting about time for centuries, even if the anxiety deepened with the invention of clocks. A reader has just sent me a glorious excerpt from Rabelais’ Gargantua, which was written in the 16th century. It contains wisdom and advice that ring true today:
“… And because in all other monasteries and nunneries all is composed, limited, and regulated by hours, it was decreed that in this new structure there should be neither clock nor dial, but that according to the opportunities and incident occasions, all their hours should be disposed of; for, said Gargantua, the greatest loss of time that I know, is to count the hours. What good comes of it? Nor can there be any greater dotage in the world than for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment and discretion.”
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