Waste

Today has been a good day.  Emily, Terri, and Ryan visited.  The time went by too quickly.  We discussed great Leonardo DiCaprio films.  Emily and I played San Juan twice; I may have won both times.  Finally, I spoke with my boys on the phone for thirty minutes.  There is nothing better than good company.

The medical update.  I'm eating plenty of calories.  My platelets were at 10; I received two transfusions of blood product to correct that.  Tomorrow I begin a course of chemo with another spinal tap on Thursday.

One topic I consider frequently, and that I've been meaning to write about, is waste.  When I explain a set of choices to Max I will say, for example, "Max, you could spend the next few minutes watching a show or you could play outside but in 10 minutes we need to leave.".  Max invariably replies "I would like to waste my time...".  My proposition to him utilizes the word spend.  His response consistently converts spend to waste.

The first few times I noticed Max converting spend to waste I thought perhaps he was grabbing for a word that roughly meant what he was hoping to express.  Later I confirmed that this wasn't the case.  We discussed his use of the word and I tried, gently, to help him understand that there is a difference between spend and waste.  Now, there is certainly overlap in the many definitions for the two words.  But waste generally denotes a lack or loss of value.  It was clear to me that Max understood the definitions; he was converting on purpose.

He wasn't just doing it in the scenarios I described.  He used the word waste often where I would have used the word spend.  If we were taking a trip to the grocery store he would take one of his two dollars and explain to me that he only wanted to waste one of them.  He had me thinking.

For several months he's continued this pattern.  I only attempted to correct him once.  For the most part he's converted me.  He is using the words correctly.  The rest of us are, I estimate, fooling and comforting ourselves by using the word spend when we waste.

When Max buys candy at the store and later enjoys the experience of eating it, he gets as much value out of the experience as the next person.  The truth though, and Max knows this, is that candy doesn't offer you health benefits and it all tastes pretty much the same.  Any given candy buying/eating experience is difficult to distinguish from another.  So the question would be, have you ever had candy before?  If the answer is no, then it is probably an experience worth spending time and money on.  If the answer is yes, then when you find yourself buying and eating candy you're wasting money and time.

In life we have a certain amount of time.  Time is the most valuable resource we have.  If we live with a bit of caution and maintain our health we can buy a bit of extra time; we also buy a higher quality of time if we are in good health.  Using our time to buy a nearly identical experiences repeatedly is a waste.

Max is a very honest person.  He hasn't demonstrated capacity for guile.  He is correcting our use of the word spend by replacing it with a more honest word, waste.  I'm better off being honest about wasting vs. spending.  To spend is to trade.  We should use the word spend when the trade is fair.  If I am getting the short end of a trade, if I am buying experiences that are old and tired, I am wasting.  Perhaps if I use the words as Max does I would save a great deal of waste.

Again, I leave my ramblings incomplete.  Max loves to waste and so do I.  Max has helped me see it in a different context.  I didn't know I loved to waste until Max made it clear to me that it is indeed what I do.  I always thought I was spending.  Perhaps we're simply a couple of addicts, full of wisdom but unwilling to stop rolling the dice.  It will be interesting to see where my thoughts on this matter come to rest, they will take time to settle.

The picture of the day:  Jonas, from 2 and 1/2 years ago.  He is a wonderful person, enjoy.