Newly harvested winter squash

“Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes and figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe.”—Epictetus

I enjoy boring people with the same punchline over and over. When asked how long it takes to make my gumbo (or a similar dish) I say, “Two years. A year to raise the hog to make the sausage, and two years for the rooster to mature, become useful at breeding, and then become even more useful for the pot.” The point, of course, is the same as that of Epictetus, one reinforced daily by farming, that small pleasures and life necessities take time. The process, the journey, if you will, is wed to the destination. One does not happen without the other. Be patient.

Some time back I was weeding in the garden with one of my apparently endless supply of nephews. We were chatting about reading books and listening to audiobooks, and he stopped me with a comment about his habit of listening to books at 1.5 times the speed of the normal recording. His reasoning was simple: he has limited time and an endless number of things he would like to listen to, so he speeds up the book so he can get on to the next one.

That comment, uttered as we yanked pigweed among the rows of tomato plants, has stuck with, and troubled, me ever since. Not because I think my nephew may be short-changing his experience while listening to whatever young adult schlock he has chosen to waste time on, but because his thinking so clearly encapsulates the zeitgeist of the millennium. That is, by putting one’s senses into overdrive, one can, even should, increase one’s experiences.

Perhaps it is our age difference. His life’s project is before him. Mine is clouded by the uncertain murk of a future too fast approaching, with a timeline of anywhere from another 32 years to … yikes, tomorrow. Regardless, his comment seemed emblematic, a touchstone, of our culture at large.

I sympathize (even as I do not comprehend) with a desire to experience more in life, to get more done. What I object to is the speed with which let us call them 1.5ers expect their experiences to wash over their lives like endless waves, skipping steps in a process that should be savored.

You cannot truly read a book without starting at page one and ending at the final word. Likewise, you cannot raise a child to be a responsible adult by concentrating only on years 2 and 13, cannot become a farmer by simply purchasing a parcel of land. Each act is an essential part of the play. Learning to see and experience the whole cycle, being patient for it, is part of the joy in living. Perhaps then, the lesson to be learned for those 1.5er moments in each of our lives is this: Those things we feel the need to rush are not worth pursuing. In leaving them unpursued, we allow more time for anticipating and then enjoying the ripened figs in the years we do have.

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Reading this weekend: Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (C. Lasch) and What’s Wrong With the World (G.K. Chesterton)