After some procrastinating, some attempting to center, some laundry, some destructive thinking, and some despair, you sit down and read in preparation for an oral presentation next week. You re-read a few chapters of Hyrum Smith’s time management book. You plan to discuss the origin of the desire to manage one’s life - as well as what the assignment requires. You think that the impulse to manage one’s life springs from a sense of imprisonment, a sense that one is not really in control of one’s life, that one does not really know what is important. You observe that this type of thinking is also a characteristic of the culture you are a part of. You think that the American culture that you live in is bankrupt in meaning; that the roles it encourages do not provide the individual being with purpose nor with the possibility of flourishing. One feels confused, dragged along, diffused, as if one is not a part of anything, as if one is not worth anything. One is to get an ‘education’, a salaried job, take a loan out for a large house and a suitable car, and become a consumer.
You think that in a healthy culture the life-narrative is nurturing, that the individual’s authentic potential will be encouraged, that he will be given the conditions to be in touch with himself, and that he will not feel as if he is an outsider. Contrastingly, you observe that the individual today is from birth rushed along on a sort of highway and at no point is he encouraged to trust in what he values. He drives along on the path at top speed. He absorbs the terrain alongside as only a momentary blur before it disappears. He accelerates and leans into the turns. And yet from lack of physical use his body has atrophied. He has power steering and power breaks. His food is procured warm and regular from little boxes just off the highway. He sleeps by reclining his seat. When he has reached the end of the highway, when he must hike the rest of his way, he can only feel perplexed. He knows the subtle compartments and oddities of his car. He can determine when his gas tank needs filling. But what does he know about hiking out off the roads colored black, yellow, and white?
All you mean by the metaphor is that you do not sense that the culture has set a priority for its number to be in touch with themselves. Perhaps it is not possible for a society to do this. This is one possibility. You must consider this at some point. If it is so, then political configurations ought only to be involved in protection of its citizens from its own citizens and maintenance of its roadways.
You read while sitting on the ground in your room. As far as you can tell, Smith submits that inner peace is a natural result of actualizing your core values in your daily life. He has a model of personal fulfillment that has your core values on bottom, long-range goals, intermediate goals, and daily task above them. He maintains that flourishing or balance is the state of being in which your core values feed daily tasks. Planning your day, then, becomes a key to balance. In fact, planning or considering is everything. To understand your core values you must consider yourself. What is important to you? From here you are to ask: What could I do to infuse what is important into my life? Your day, then, is to be a breaking up of these goals into manageable bits. You will spend time each morning planning your day while keeping in mind the large and small goals as well as your most basic values that inform them. This is a world in which you have grown a paddle, and now you can row of your own accord, not having to wait for the tide to move you along.
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