If I’m never able to acknowledge that the current moment is nice, then what’s the point? Never noticing it’s nice leads to the aching feeling that—as the thread-bare adage goes—time is slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass.

Time management is a cognitively strenuous task, leaving us feeling harried. As the opportunity cost of time increases, our concern about “wasting” our precious hours grows more acute. On balance, we are better off, but the blessing of high-value time can overwhelm some individuals, just as can the ready availability of high-calorie food.

~ Alex Tabarrok from, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/the-harried-leisure-class.html

Fortunately I have taken steps to ensure that I regularly notice, and think, “this is nice.” I’m not always successful; I can still be spotted being a grumpster, or a petulant three-year-old. But that’s the point: Life is a range of experiences, and once I realized my scale of judgement were always tipped to one side, when that’s clearly not the reality of my existence, I set about adjusting the scale.

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