On Monday, my colleague Edith Zimmerman wrote about the joy of waking up blisteringly early. The piece led my colleague Katie Heaney to write about how the best time to go to bed is 8:45 p.m, which led my colleague Anna Silman to write about how maybe everybody should just leave her alone, regarding wake-up time and bedtime. Regardless of sleep schedules, said my colleague Gabriella Paiella, afternoon is the worst time of day. Actually, different times of day are good and bad, depending on the day, said my colleague Lisa Ryan. While I love all of my colleagues and believe they are as smart as they are beautiful, which is quite, not that superficial beauty matters, it just so happens that they possess it and celebrating that fact is just fine in moderation, I am here to tell you that their opinions are inconsequential because all time is death, and you should enjoy it.
Time is ending. “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time,” said Fight Club. Remember? I do, and I’ll remember that quote forever, as well as, “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” and, “His name is Robert Paulson,” which is unfortunate — a lot of space in my mind devoted to quotes from the movie Fight Club. Anyway, what? Oh.
Clearly, it is common to spend a lot of time thinking about time, and how we are spending time, and the quality of the time we are spending. But no matter the benefits of morning or night, no matter one’s preference about lunch — which is the worst meal, make no mistake — the minutes we spend moving through them are minutes truly spent. And then you’re dead.
We will rarely work to our full potential, we will rarely feel awake enough or tired enough. A sandwich will never be as good as their fans claim they are, and a lunch plan will always feel, in several ways, depressing. But we’re here anyway. So we can only enjoy it. The times of day, the seasons. There are things to be found and to savor, even if you dislike, say, winter, or, say, morning. There is at least the coming in from the cold; there is at least the pink sunrise. It is very beautiful, really. And then we die.
If only there could be something good said about lunch, but unfortunately there cannot. Lunch is very bad, and fuck it. Thank you.
