The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

by John Koenig

Whenever you settled down to sleep, you’d find it hard to ignore the feeling of your heart heaving around in its cage, pounding out its rhythm, which only seems to get faster the more you think about it. With every beat, you’d feel your fortune being withdrawn, cent by cent, a steady deposit of coins rattling down into a deep metal tray. How long would it be before you’d start hoarding time, turning over every moment in your mind, looking for a price tag? You’d become all too aware how much life you keep trading for a pittance of salary, aware that tying your shoelaces wrong will cost you twenty beats, that posting a comment online might set you back three hundred, all of which might’ve been better spent elsewhere. You’d come to the end of a bad movie and whisper to yourself with some urgency, “That’s two hours of my life I’m never getting back.” Alas. You’re never getting any of it back. It’s the cost of doing business. And even if you could have it appraised down to the fraction of a second, its value would be no clearer. Time has no inherent value. If it’s a currency, it’s a kind of fiat currency, in that you can’t just cash it in for anything solid. Which means it’s up to you to decide what it’s worth trading for. It may be a blessing that you never know how much time you have left, because it leaves you no other option but to listen to your heart and get into its rhythm, so you can focus on the things that make life worth living. So go ahead: make every second count, ...