I wasted time, and now doth time waste me

We were treated in school assembly this week to a talk from the Second Master, Mr Dubbins, who spoke with great passion and sense on the importance of making the most of the present. Assemblies have been themed by quotations from Shakespeare this term and Mr Dubbins took as his theme the above line from Act V of Richard II as the deposed King laments his lot and reflects on the opportunities he wasted as he now wastes away himself.

With this in mind pupils were asked what they had done and were planning to do but were also asked to consider whether, by too often looking forward to the future, we end up living our lives in the future and fail to enjoy the present. Schools can be guilty of this too – do we fall into a trap where year 9 is to prepare for GCSE, which is a gateway to IB or A Level, which are only valued as routes to university, which gets us a job, which gets us a pension and then…

This is a theme returned to often by philosophers, writers and thinkers. Mr Dubbins reminded us of Paul Tillich’s idea of the present as the ‘eternal now’; he showed a clip from Dead Poets Society when Mr Keating reminds his charges that in the end we are all ‘food for worms’, that life is amazing but short and we need to seize the day, carpe diem; he quoted Herrick’s ‘Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may’ and read the extract from the Screwtape letters when the young devil is told by Satan that the best way to do evil in the world is to tell men ‘not to worry as they have plenty of time before they need concern themselves with [heaven and hell.] Then you’ll see what trouble they can get into.’

I was pleased we were reminded of the importance of Now. Of how critical it is not to squander our time and how easily we can wish moments away for a future that may never come. Important things happen every day, and when pupils or parents focus on how well we are preparing our pupils for ‘the next stage’ there is a very real danger we lose sight of the importance of the stage we are in. It manifests itself in the ‘is it on the syllabus?’ question that can so irritate the classroom teacher and it creates the dander that we only value that which is measurable or valued by a future institution.

Mr Dubbins reminded us on Monday to cherish every moment, and it was a moment this week that I valued for being at.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
  Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
  Tomorrow will be dying.