The Tradeoff.
The cost of frolicking?
I suppose one consequence of existing in a culture of productivity (or at least an effort towards that end) is that one develops a strange relationship with time.
Every minute spent is half spent psychoanalysing the previous minute spent. Then days pass by in frolicking, and it’s back to isolating each second to alchemise ticked to-dos from thin air. It’s definitely a cycle, whether it is virtuous or vicious remains to be seen.
There are days when I see someone doing something that makes me go “That’s so cool”, and then a sharp left into “Okay, what am I doing?” and so on. On others, the almost-physical cognisance of passing time (slipping through my fingers) is too strong to ignore and something for the galleries must be done. Between these two lies a moment that feels timeless, that mocks me with the notion that, despite all my fussing, what’s going to pass shall pass anyhow. Que será, será.
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And then there’s analysing the tradeoff.
Life is a dance of tradeoffs, or so it seems, when I turn to every major life decision I’ve made so far. Lesser of the two evils, pick your poison, opportunity cost, and so on. Every moment spent in the quietness of trying to materialise my goals into reality is a second missed in frolick and vice versa. Every mindless laugh had cost a mindful moment of silence.
But what would either mean without the loss of the other? When I choose to forego one, the other becomes so much more important simply by virtue of the sacrifice involved. And while the objective answer to the question of whether the call was the correct one or not might not even exist, much less be easy to find.
I don’t think this is a question capable of resolution. And I shan’t attempt to resolve it anyhow, perhaps the beauty lies in the ever-so-frustrating voice that asks me, at the end of each day:
“Did I do this right?”
