{"id":32579,"date":"2025-11-01T21:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/how-not-to-waste-your-life\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T21:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:17:12","slug":"how-not-to-waste-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/how-not-to-waste-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"How Not to Waste Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cLet me not seem to have lived in vain,\u201d<\/a> the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe whispered on his deathbed, not realizing that the astronomical tables he was leaving behind would become the portal through which Kepler arrives at the laws of planetary motion<\/a>; not realizing that the measure of an unwasted life is not what outlives it but how it was lived \u2014 how much integrity and authenticity and creative vitality filled these numbered days, these unrepeatable hours. <\/p>\n

Most of us will not leave behind a revolutionary insight into the nature of the universe, but we too forget that no matter what we do leave behind \u2014 a line of DNA, a great book, a hospital wing \u2014 it is only, in poet Muriel Rukeyser\u2019s shimmering words, in the living moment that \u201cwe touch life and all the energy of the past and future\u201d<\/a>; it is only, in poet Mario Benedetti\u2019s shimmering words, when we cease sparing ourselves<\/a> and start spending ourselves that we come truly alive. <\/p>\n

The most prolific diarist of all the Transcendentalists, Nathaniel Hawthorne<\/a> (July 4, 1804\u2013May 19, 1864) takes up the question of what that means throughout his voluminous notebooks<\/a>. Between story ideas (one of which became The Scarlet Letter<\/em>), tender records of raising his young son<\/a>, and lyrical accounts of his rambles in nature, he keeps reckoning with how to live in order not to look back with \u201ca lament for life\u2019s wasted sunshine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Nathaniel Hawthorne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fatherless since the age of four, so achingly introverted he was reported to duck behind trees and rocks to avoid speaking with townspeople, described by Hermann Melville (who wrote him passionate love letters<\/a> and dedicated Moby-Dick<\/em> to him) as a man of \u201cgreat, genial, comprehending silences,\u201d Hawthorne felt deeply the brevity of life and the urgency of filling it with meaning \u2014 nowhere more movingly than in watching his young daughter interact with his dying mother<\/a>. He understood that the haunting proximity of death is precisely why we can\u2019t afford to live a short distance from alive; that while there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives<\/a>, it falls on us to make ours beautiful. <\/p>\n

In a journal entry from his early thirties, Hawthorne writes:<\/p>\n

\n

All sorts of persons, and every individual, has a place to fill in the world, and is important in some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a sentiment Nietzsche would echo a generation later in his insistence that \u201cno one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,\u201d<\/a> Hawthorne observes that we must each make that choice for ourselves and find our own place, seeing past the values of our upbringing, the templates of our culture, and the permission slips of our epoch. To lose our \u201cown aspect\u201d in these imprints is for Hawthorne nothing less than \u201ca mortal symptom of a person.\u201d We can\u2019t, he cautions, \u201cuse other people\u2019s experience.\u201d But in order to use our own, to learn from it so that our lives may broaden and deepen, we must first learn to trust ourselves, developing a \u201cfeeling within\u201d of \u201cwhat is true and what is false\u201d without in order to have \u201cthe right perception of things.\u201d <\/p>\n

Because the mind is the crucible of experience and perception, there is no greater waste of life than the waste of mind. Admonishing against his era\u2019s equivalent of scrolling a social media feed, Hawthorne writes:<\/p>\n

\n

The peculiar weariness and depression of spirits which is felt after a day wasted in turning over a magazine or other light miscellany, different from the state of the mind after severe study; because there has been no excitement, no difficulties to be overcome, but the spirits have evaporated insensibly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(This is precisely why learning something is the best way to lift yourself up when the world gets you down<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a>, also available as a stand-alone print<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A year into his thirties, not knowing he had already lived more than half his store of living, Hawthorne itemizes what it would take to have an unwasted life:<\/p>\n

\n

Four precepts: To break off customs; to shake off spirits ill-disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing against one\u2019s genius.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In his time, the word \u201cgenius\u201d retained more of its original Latin connotation, meaning not only one\u2019s creative talent or intellectual prowess but one\u2019s essential spirit. It is the body that trembles with aliveness, but it is the spirit that animates it with life. Hawthorne never lost sight of a fundamental truth our productivity-obsessed culture is continually negating at its own expense: What fortifies the spirit to do its work in the world, be it art or activism, often appears on the surface as wasted time \u2014 the hours spent walking in a forest and watching the clouds over the city skyline and pebble-hunting on the beach, the purposeless play of the mind daydreaming and body dancing, all the while ideas and fortitudes fermenting within. <\/p>\n

Reflecting on one such period of his life, filled with tending to his vegetable garden, reading, napping, walking with his wife, picking white lilies from the riverside and scarlet cardinal-flowers from the edge of the pond, Hawthorne writes:<\/p>\n

\n

My life, at this time, is more like that of a boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a boy\u2026 My business is merely to live and to enjoy; and whatever is essential to life and enjoyment will come as naturally as the dew from Heaven.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

I look back upon a day spent in what the world would call idleness, and for which I can myself suggest no more appropriate epithet; and which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been spent amiss. True; it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours, to spend a lifetime in this manner; but, for a few summer-weeks, it is good to live as if the world were Heaven. And so it is, and so it shall be; although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil might mingle itself with our realities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A century later, George Orwell would embody the same truth about the spirit, growing a rose garden while dismantling totalitarianism<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a>. (Available as a print<\/a> and as stationery cards<\/a>, benefitting the Audubon Society.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Couple with Henry James on how to stop waiting and start living<\/a>, then revisit Hawthorne on how to look and really see<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet me not seem to have lived in vain,\u201d the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe whispered on his deathbed, not realizing that the astronomical tables he was leaving behind would become the portal through which Kepler arrives at the laws of planetary motion; not realizing that the measure of an unwasted life is not what outlives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 19:53:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}