The Contradiction of Time

Shaun Smerling
2 min readApr 3, 2024

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You work 8 hours to live 4.
You work 6 days to enjoy 1.
You work 8 hours to eat in 15 minutes.
You work 8 hours and sleep 5.
You work all year just to take a week or two vacation.
You work all your life to retire in old age, and contemplate only your last breaths.

Every lengthy moment standing in line waiting is spent obliviously doom scrolling through your phone

Every time spent speaking about your life continuously is a moment lost listening to the words of others

Every second spent frantically “optimizing” is knowledge lost from the gift of stillness

Gone are the days we used to say goodbye and actually mean it. Not goodbye and i’ll text you in 20 minutes.

Lost are the times we used to sit in an apartment on a rainy day with a friend with whom we could talk the world about. Music would play on the vinyl. Rain would patter down the window. Words would be spoken, understood, and reciprocated. But most importantly, time would be forgotten

In the end, you come to realize that life is nothing but a parody of yourself practicing your own oblivion.

We have become so accustomed to material and social slavery that we no longer see the chains that we are wrapped in

Life is a short journey. No longer then a good nights sleep.

Enjoy it.

There is no right time; the time is in the here and now.

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Shaun Smerling
Shaun Smerling

Written by Shaun Smerling

technology, writing, & philosophy

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