Joy, awe, sadness, fear, grief–movie directors spend hours constructing their films in order to inspire any one of these emotions. However, what if after watching a movie, rather than feeling elated or inspired, you felt confused? You wouldn’t think this would make for a good movie, yet these types of films are always my favorites. This is due to how they often portray the confusing nature of time alongside humanity’s habitual misuse of it.
Anyone who has ever watched a Christopher Nolan film likely already knows how confusing films that explore time can be. Many of his masterpieces, such as “Interstellar,” “Memento” and "Tenet,” can all be somewhat puzzling due to how they present the precious, fleeting and frightening nature of time. In “Tenet,” for example, the story flips between being told, moving both forwards and backwards through time (and sometimes both simultaneously!). Nolan isn’t alone in exploring time’s complexity, with films such as “Groundhog Day,” “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” and “Edge of Tomorrow” also exploring the concept of time, showcasing plots in which various people, despite seemingly having all the time in the world, struggle to accomplish their goals.
Despite the various convoluted ways in which time is portrayed in these movies, one truth generally comes into play: Time is a precious resource. We only have so many hours in a day, so many days in a year and so many years in a lifetime. So with such a vivid understanding of time’s finite nature, how then do we use it wisely?
In Oliver Burkeman’s book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” he elaborates on the fact that we all know we only have so much time, with the average human only having about 4,000 weeks to live. Knowing that we have such limited time results in us attempting to squeeze as much into our lives as possible. The more we can check off from our bucket list or daily to-do list, the more we make use of our fleeting time. Mentally, many of us believe that more efficient time management will lead to getting all the stuff we need to get done in a week finished, which will finally enable us to be able to rest. He calls this dilemma “The Efficiency Trap” due to the reality that “becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster…” Burkeman further elaborates on this, saying, “The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer”
Even as I sit here writing this Last Word, I can’t help but fight off thoughts such as, “I should be writing faster, I have so much to do today!” or “If you just get more done today, then I’ll finally be able to wake up and take a breather tomorrow!” While it is important to think about how one uses their time, the following still remains true: life is too short to treat moments as just stepping stones to a distant time in which we’ll allow ourselves to enjoy life. As Burkeman puts it, “mortality makes it impossible to ignore the absurdity of living solely for the future.” There will always be more to do, even if there were 25 or 30 hours in a day. You simply can’t get every little thing done, you might feel like you need to and that’s not something worth feeling guilty about. When we allow these unfinished tasks to feel like personal failures, guilt sets in, and motivation turns into defeat. This defeat then leads to procrastination, and the cycle of guilt continues.
Getting tasks done takes time; growth takes time. It might seem terrifying just how much there is to do in our brief life spans, yet this doesn’t have to result in a perpetual state of being overwhelmed. It also doesn’t have to lead to us procrastinating out of defeat. According to Burkeman, it's actually a cause for relief, saying “you get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.”
I’ve realized that part of the reason I enjoy all of the confusing time-related movies is because they feel authentic. Rather than just being another voice telling me how to “lock in on life using these in five simple steps!” they feel like an honest exploration into how time-constrained and confusing our lives are. How are any of us supposed to use such a short amount of time to balance everything we care about? How can we best live in the moment? It's all rather confusing. But in the process of learning how to manage the time we’ve been blessed with, let us not forget to enjoy the daily beauties in life. Rather than seeing time as a depleting resource that we’ll never have enough of, what if, instead, it's a daily gift? What if, in between rushing to our classes, we took a moment to enjoy the crisp autumn air, the singing of the birds, and the faces of those we love? If there’s anything we can take away from both Burkeman and all the confusing movies I’ve mentioned, it's that everything in life is a matter of time, so might as well enjoy that time now rather than waiting for it to begin.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of 51勛圖厙 University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, 51勛圖厙 University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.