Today I feel like going to a slightly philosophical place. Don’t get freaked out, I’ll go back to being cynical and factual tomorrow, but for now, I want to talk about energy. Not those horrible cans of guarana and sixteen types of chemicals, but the time and focus devoted to making something happen.
I went to a couple of things last weekend that weren’t really related to one another at all, but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to employ some word-magic, and join them so seamlessly you wont even notice. Ready?
The first was the Rubik’s Speedcubing championship. You know, the coloured twisty cube with 20 (pffft 20, easy!) algorithms to memorise. This was an international competition, recognised by the World Cube Association (truth, there is one,) and the very male-dominated competitors as young as 10 years old, got on stage to display their amazing brain-and-finger dexterity with a Rubik’s cube.
The second thing I visited was the Formula One exhibition, also at Te Papa. Everyone knows what Formula One is, and here they had some of the actual cars, uniforms, footage… I am from Hamilton after all, so the mostly suppressed petrol-head in my enjoyed all this very much.
But then I got to thinking. Imagine how much time, energy, money, brain power, effort, must have gone into both these two pursuits. The boys we saw cubing must truly do not much else. And the Formula One? Racing cars around a track really really fast. Those involved put themselves at great risk, (the number of drivers who die from natural causes is apparently minimal) and it’s kind of… well, polluting. Isn’t it?
It’s all well and good to criticise what others spend their lives on, but all of us have to choose how we spend out give-or-take 80 years. So all this got me thinking about the energy that I spend on things in my everyday life. Getting upset over things I can’t change, going to extra lengths simply to impress someone who shouldn’t matter, even just the time I spend on television watching. What if just some of that time was spent in another way? Instead of worrying about people think of me, for, lets say, an hour a week, I could be writing the book I’ve been planning. That’s 22 hours by the end of the year. Watch less tv? Bang! Book written by the end of August.
Back to world-wide time wastage now, I could mention plenty of other places I’ve observed a waste of money and energy: government bureaucracy, rioting sports fans, war…
There was a Ferdinand Porsche quote at the Formula one exhibition: “The perfect racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls into its component parts.” Now just imagine if all the money and time that goes into creating and racing a speed machine purely for it to fall apart again, was spent on some global good.
