Perhaps my favorite painting is Salvador Dali's aptly titled "Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion." At the painting's center is a gold watch, strapless, with a milky white face that's beginning to droop and peel and tangle in little knots whose ends splay like the nubs of a ballpark frank. Shards of glass and broken casing erupt overhead. The numeral five floats in the foreground. A moth sits peacefully in the lower left-hand corner. Time stops. All that is solid melts into air.
"Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion" is striking and bizarre, and it has hung on my wall since freshman year. I bought it to articulate a goal I'd set for college to live unencumbered by the ticking clock, free to play, study and, above all, exist without the gnawing guilt of occasional idleness. The painting forced me to relax. It made me hopeful that time could be vanquished, forgotten.
For a while things worked more or less as intended. But as the terms at Dartmouth came and went, my work accumulated, my responsibilities metastasized and the pressure to succeed accumulated, with the concomitant effect that I developed an increasingly desperate obsession with efficiency.
I started spending less time with friends. I no longer waited in line at Home Plate for my favorite panini. I thought the cashier who wasted five seconds finding my item on her screen epitomized the worst of humanity. I rarely turned off my computer because I hated watching it load. "Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion" fell off my wall and I never re-hung it. Most days I went to class, ate, worked hard for six hours or so, ate again, worked more, relaxed a bit and tried to turn in early because, of course, I had to do it all again the next day.
This routine is at least somewhat common among Dartmouth students, and in fact is not limited to our campus at all. When asked about what they'd do with an extra day in the week, most Americans said they'd spend most of the time working rather than with family, friends, etc. Here at Dartmouth, there are freshmen who stay up till 5 a.m. at least once a week just to complete their coursework ("College freshmen face increasing stress levels" Feb. 7). It's no coincidence that Counseling and Human Development Services at Dick's House is "getting more use than it's ever gotten."
I recently became aware that my own problem, at least, is largely caused by a completely false belief I often take for granted as true: that I am the center of the universe, the most important being alive; my hunger and work and time are supreme. This kind of thinking is automatic, what writer David Foster Wallace called our "default setting." It's encoded in our selfish genes we're programmed to survive and reproduce at nearly all costs, to satisfy our own interests before those of strangers and to conceptualize time solely with regard to our unique demands upon it.
Thinking in our default setting is emotionally and psychologically unhealthy because it implies ipso facto that everyone else is an obstacle, which is lonely and a bit like self-imposed solitary confinement. The only way I've learned to escape is to consciously think and care about others, to consider that they may feel the same as me while waiting in line, and to accept that there are people with priorities more important than my own.
This term I've kept a gratitude journal. It's a start. Each night I record at least five things I'm thankful for, big or small. So far I feel happier and more optimistic. I'm not obsessed with maximizing productivity. I'm more empathetic. I sleep better. Psychological research confirms my experiences changing thought patterns by actively choosing to view the world differently can dramatically change moods.
In real life, watches don't explode spontaneously. Moments of extreme entropy don't freeze in time to be painted masterfully with oil on canvas and to later be photographed and re-printed on thin sheets of glossy parchment. In real life it isn't enough to purchase a symbol and wish it were true. In real life, true freedom from inefficiency, constant pressure, loneliness requires sacrifice and patience. It requires making conscious decisions about where to draw meaning in daily life. This isn't easy. It's the kind of the thing that probably takes years to master, and even then it's impossible to do all the time. But it's worth every second.
