The Daily Gift of Time

Let us make room for Bennett himself. This is a continuous passage from the first chapter, where a day becomes a fresh gift. He does not begin with a timetable. He wants us to be surprised, briefly, by something familiar: there is time before us again, and a life will be made from it.

You will hear the historical word consols. These were British government securities, used here as an image of reliable income. Bennett compares that income with the arrival of time. What follows is his own text.

Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. It is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself!

For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.

Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say: - "This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not?

The author's passage ends here. The purse makes an ordinary day feel valuable. The thought of another hour also leaves room to return after a disappointing day: yesterday's loss need not become a verdict on everything that follows.

His ideal democracy is a metaphor, though, not an accurate description of everyone's circumstances. Equal day lengths do not mean equal freedom. Nor can we know how much future we have. We can take an appreciation of available time from this passage without treating it as a promise of an unlimited supply.

Now we return to our discussion. In the next lesson, we will see how part of the day already available can become almost invisible because work gets to count as the main event.