The first book I read
in the past seven months turned out to be a stimulating and of significant
value. The revelation of the book happened in Farnam Street.
To my surprise, the
book How
to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennet (35 pages)
helped me to complete it in a short period, with a high dosage on appreciating
time and live a meaningful life.
The book (part of a bigger work) written in 1910 by
Arnold is perfectly applicable today to many developing countries and
especially Indians (living in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and other metros). They
face challenges which were accurately captured in the book.
The preface correctly stated “It
is better to have lived a bit than never to have lived at all”.
Section wise learning’s
is listed below:
From Preface
“You are not going to allow your
highest welfare to depend upon the precarious immediate co-operation of a
fellow creature.”
“It is always the man who has
tasted life who demands more of it. And it is always the man who never gets out
of bed who is the most difficult to rouse.”
The Daily Miracle
The best part of time and how it
is given to us by Nature is described beautifully:
“The supply of time is truly a
daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake
up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four
hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours.
It is the most precious 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.” But “The supply of time,
though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.”
Another important aspect of time
we forget, it is unbiased. Author states “Waste your infinitely precious commodity as
much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No 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."
The financial aspect of the
capital Time received is highly controlled and does not allow man to go beyond
means / draw from the accumulated source.
“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.”
Author states “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"!”
Precautions before Beginning
The author has bluntly mentioned that in the desire to handle time
properly it is the petty success which matters than the glorious failures.
The Cause of the Troubles
The pain of not knowing what to do with the capital Time is succinctly
put “He has a solid coin of time to spend
every day—call it a sovereign. He must get change for it, and in getting change
he is content to lose heavily.”
Tennis and The Immortal Soul
In this section a crucial part of activity performed by all individuals
is directly attacked i.e. reading of newspapers during train journey from
residence to office.
Author states “Newspapers are
produced with rapidity, to be read with rapidity. There is no place in my daily
programme for newspapers. I read them as I may in odd moments.”
“The idea of devoting to them
thirty or forty consecutive minutes of wonderful solitude (for nowhere can one
more perfectly immerse one's self in one's self than in a compartment full of
silent, withdrawn, smoking males) is to me repugnant. I cannot possibly allow
you to scatter priceless pearls of time with such Oriental lavishness. You are
not the Shah of time.”
The best time to read newspaper according to the author is during lunch
breaks ( or tea breaks if any).
Remember Human Nature
Importance of exercising the mind
is rightly explained “You practise physical exercises for a mere
ten minutes morning and evening, and yet you are not astonished when your
physical health and strength are beneficially affected every hour of the day,
and your whole physical outlook changed. Why should you be astonished that an
average of over an hour a day given to the mind should permanently and
completely enliven the whole activity of the mind?”
In this section, importance of habits and sacrifice are stressed to
achieve the enlivening of the mind. In this significance of starting “quietly, unostentatiously” is a very
good advice for a newcomer who has wasted his time.
Controlling The Mind
The age old mantra of Mind Control is emphasized by stating “And without the power to concentrate—that is
to say, without the power to dictate to the brain its task and to ensure
obedience—true life is impossible. Mind control is the first element of a full
existence.”
The Reflective Mood
A truth which we refuse to accept / we are ignorant of is that we have
stopped reflection of the day’s events.
Confucius has rightly summarized it "By
three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest;
second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the
bitterest."
Author has rightly picked up the noblest one that is reflection and
states “I am entirely convinced that what
is more than anything else lacking in the life of the average well-intentioned
man of to-day is the reflective mood.”
“The chances are that you have
already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained
it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from
the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of
reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.”
Interest In The Arts
After reading many articles / books on various subjects of interest,
what I missed was rightly pointed out by author. Below three paragraphs, nails importance
of reading a book on a subject and participating in that subject activity.
“Now surely your inability to
perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on a piano need not prevent you from
making yourself familiar with the construction of the orchestra to which you
listen a couple of nights a week during a couple of months! As things are, you
probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments
producing a confused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for details
because you have never trained your ears to listen to details.
If you were asked to name the
instruments which play the great theme at the beginning of the C minor symphony
you could not name them for your life's sake. Yet you admire the C minor
symphony. It has thrilled you. It will thrill you again. You have even talked
about it, in an expansive mood, to that lady—you know whom I mean. And all you
can positively state about the C minor symphony is that Beethoven composed it
and that it is a "jolly fine thing."
Now, if you have read, say, Mr.
Krehbiel's "How to Listen to Music" (which can be got at any
bookseller's for less than the price of a stall at the Alhambra, and which
contains photographs of all the orchestral instruments and plans of the
arrangement of orchestras) you would next go to a promenade concert with an
astonishing intensification of interest in it. Instead of a confused mass, the
orchestra would appear to you as what it is—a marvellously balanced organism
whose various groups of members each have a different and an indispensable
function. You would spy out the instruments, and listen for their respective
sounds. You would know the gulf that separates a French horn from an English
horn, and you would perceive why a player of the hautboy gets higher wages than
a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You
would live at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely
existed there in a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright
object.”
Nothing In Life Is Humdrum
Why it is important to understand the cause? Cause helps in making the individual “..not only large minded but large
hearted.”.
Also “The study of cause and
effect, while it lessens the painfulness of life, adds to life's
picturesqueness.”
Reference:
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