How to Live on 24 Hours a Day | Page 6

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. Mo 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?
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health,
pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use,
its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality.
All depends on that. Your happiness--the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my
friends!-- depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to- date as
they are, are not full of "How to live on a given income of time," instead of "How to live

on a given income of money"! Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one
perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in
gross heaps.
If one can't contrive to live on a certain income of money, one earns a little more--or
steals it, or advertises for it. One doesn't necessarily muddle one's life because one can't
quite manage on a thousand pounds a year; one braces the muscles and makes it guineas,
and balances the budget. But if one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a
day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's life
definitely. The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.
Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say "lives," I do not mean
exists, nor "muddles through." Which of us is free from that uneasy feeling that the "great
spending departments" of his daily life are not managed as they ought to be? Which of us
is quite sure that his fine suit is not surmounted by a shameful hat, or that in attending to
the crockery he has forgotten the quality of the food? Which of us is not saying to
himself--which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shall alter that when I
have a little more time"?
We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there
is. It is the realisation of this profound and neglected truth (which, by the way, I have not
discovered) that has led me to the minute practical examination of daily
time-expenditure.

II
THE DESIRE TO EXCEED ONE'S PROGRAMME
"But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything except the point,
"what is he driving at with his twenty-four hours a day? I have no difficulty in living on
twenty-four hours a day. I do all that I want to do, and still find time to go in for
newspaper competitions. Surely it is a simple affair, knowing that one has only
twenty-four hours a day, to content one's self with twenty-four hours a day!"
To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You are precisely the man that I
have been wishing to meet for about forty years. Will you kindly send me your name and
address, and state your charge for telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you,
you ought to be talking to me. Please come forward. That you exist, I am convinced, and
that I have not yet encountered you is my loss. Meanwhile, until you appear, I will
continue to chat with my companions in distress--that innumerable band of souls who are
haunted, more or less painfully, by the feeling that the years slip by, and slip by, and slip
by, and that they have not yet been able to get their lives into proper working order.
If we analyse that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily,