Living is hard.

This discovery startled. I was puzzling why humans misbehave: if we’re so smart, how come we’re so stupid? It’s because it’s harder being human than any other creature. Puppy Henry pointed this out. He kidded me for my carrying on. He’s happy pretty much always. Maybe not when he’s hurt or hungry or scared, but these spasms pass, he doesn’t brood about them. Sure, he gets lonely or bored sometimes, but so what? What is is, take a nap, things will reset, don’t sweat it. (Yes, I realize dogs don’t sweat.) His equanimity is dependable as dawn. Whereas mine… oy, let’s not go there. I’m up, down, sideways, glad, sad, giddy, grim, as changeable as the weather in Chicago. Right now I’m – I’m not sure – cloudy, let’s say, streaks of sun stabbing through.

What differentiates humans from other creatures? Time. Time is an idea, not a thing, as imaginary as Santa Claus or God: present if you notice it, not if not. Yesterday and tomorrow are hypotheses, almost impossible to prove: likewise, time’s start and finish. For no other creature is the end at hand. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? What happened yesterday, who cares?

Humans are obsessed with time – not just the maddening tick of the clock, relentless, impossible to arrest – but imaginary epochs, past, present, future, that we’ve conjured to compare to now. In grammar the tense for these times is subjunctive: what might have been and might be or, worse, should have been and wasn’t. The comparison between actual and imaginary time periods spooks us, causing pride, vanity, ambition, envy, regret, and other diseases. Just imagine: puppy Henry cannot fail – because failure contrasts two outcomes – what happened and what might have. In Henry’s world, nothing might have happened, it either did or didn’t, case closed.

Time creates death, another human concoction, and our number one bugbear. Death is when we run out of time. The idea of exiting raises the question, What was existence all about? That it could be about nothing seems to make no sense. So, abracadabra, God (or gods). The divine is the X-factor which squares our equation. Having posited God, He/She/It – choose your gender preference – must be defined, described, delimited, then squabbled about. That mine is preferable to yours goes without saying.

Time is hard to understand, impossible really, and hurts like hell, where it may or may not exist. Just now, Henry is sleeping comfortably and I’m writhing, I mean writing. How am I better off?

Time spooks us into genius. If it’s running out, better get a move on, discovering, inventing, experimenting, constructing. I write – scouts’ honor – to foil time. Makers are particularly prone to such nonsense.

Really, Will? You’re kidding, right?

If we’ve imagined ourselves into this funk, how do we yank ourselves out? Spinoza gave me the clue here: same way we got in: we use our heads. Intellect is our flashlight under the bed. “Do not weep,” he wrote. “Do not wax indignant. Understand.” Easier said than done – not easy at all, as he demonstrated – but doable if we work at it. For starters, consider yourself a molecule in eternity, which we obviously are: that should prick your pride blister. Then tally your good fortune – and outstare your terrors. Then do what you like (I’m having fun writing this, for example) and love whom you love. The world is hurtling to its end? What isn’t? Don’t sweat the small stuff! Be glad, you nincompoop, nothing else makes sense!

Piece of cake.