Why Most People Waste Their Lives | The Philosophy of Pink Floyd

0:02 Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more people

0:05 online opening up about how they’ve wasted their twenties,

0:09 thirties, or even forties, making bad choices, missing opportunities,

0:13 chasing the wrong things, and now living with regret.

0:18 These stories are often meant as cautionary tales

0:21 for younger people to avoid the same traps.

0:24 In just a few lines, Pink Floyd’s song Time captures something similar.

0:30 It paints a picture of how we tend to live aimlessly when we’re young,

0:35 thinking we have all the time in the world,

0:38 only to suddenly realize the years have passed,

0:41 and feel a sense of disappointment.

0:43 The lyrics of the song, written by Roger Waters,

0:47 don’t spell out exactly why we waste our lives.

0:50 But they seem to suggest that it’s

0:53 a common but tragic part of the human experience;

0:57 something we tend to fall into.

1:00 So the question is: Why do we seem to waste so much of our lives,

1:05 often realizing it too late, when many opportunities have already passed?

1:11 This video explores that question, based on Pink Floyd’s Time.

1:24 First, I’d like to note that I won’t be

1:26 playing the song in the video because of copyright reasons,

1:29 so I’ll describe the lyrics and use fragments when necessary.

1:33 For those who wish to listen to the song or read the lyrics,

1:37 I’ve put two links below as a pinned comment.

1:43 Now, let’s dive in.

1:45 Life seems to offer plenty of time to get things done.

1:49 But as Seneca once wrote, “It is not that we have a short space of time,

1:55 but that we waste much of it.” So how does this time-wasting happen?

2:00 Here’s where Pink Floyd’s Time offers a poetic

2:04 view of how a human life often unfolds.

2:09 The song makes a rough distinction between the different

2:12 phases of life most of us go through.

2:15 It doesn’t divide our lifetimes by years or biological development,

2:20 but rather by experience: how do we experience our lives in terms of time,

2:28 opportunities, meaning, and activities?

2:30 The first part of the song points to a phase in life where time passes slowly.

2:36 We carelessly waste our days, hanging around in our hometowns,

2:40 “kicking around on a piece of ground,” as the lyrics put it.

2:44 It brings us back to our younger years.

2:46 When we’re young, we hardly notice the passing of time.

2:50 When you’re ten years old, a year feels enormous.

2:53 It’s a tenth of your entire life.

2:56 But at fifty, it’s just a fraction.

2:59 And so, when you’re young, time itself seems to stretch.

3:04 A summer vacation can feel like a lifetime,

3:07 filled with new experiences and days that appear to go on forever.

3:13 When we’re young, we seem to experience time differently;

3:18 an observation supported by philosopher Henri Bergson,

3:21 who distinguished objective, measurable time, also called ‘clock time’,

3:26 from our lived experience of time.

3:29 According to Bergson,

3:30 we do not experience time mechanically, divided into segments,

3:35 such as seconds, minutes, days, or weeks, but as a continuous flow.

3:40 Time is a personal matter, shaped by the intensity of our experiences.

3:46 Moments rich in emotion or wonder can feel expansive,

3:50 while repetition can make time seem to slip by unnoticed.

3:56 The idea of ‘lived time’ helps explain why

3:59 time feels to move more slowly when we’re young.

4:03 The world still feels fresh, filled with first experiences: going to the beach,

4:08 flying for the first time, a first game console,

4:12 a first sleepover, a first love, a first kiss.

4:16 And these initial experiences are usually intense and memorable.

4:21 They seem to pull us deeply into the present.

4:25 It’s not that time elapses more slowly, or the experiences are longer;

4:30 it’s more that they feel long, or rather, deep and meaningful.

4:36 So, in a sense, youth is beautiful.

4:39 As Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes of a ten or twelve-year-old child:

4:44 “I see him impetuous, sprightly, animated,

4:48 free from anxiety or corroding care, living wholly in his own present,

4:53 and enjoying a life full to overflowing.” End quote.

4:59 In retrospect, this phase may appear as wasted time.

5:02 But from within, it often feels very different.

5:05 When we’re young, we don’t feel like we’re wasting time or that time is finite,

5:11 and that we get closer to the end every day.

5:14 We’re just present in time, dull moments included.

5:18 Most kids just want to have fun and explore their curiosity, trying new stuff.

5:24 Sure, children eventually become aware that they’ll be grown-ups at some point,

5:29 but that’s a matter for the future.

5:31 And when it’s time to get serious, life will have made clear where to go;

5:35 you just have to wait for that moment to come, as the song puts it:

5:40 “Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.”

5:44 Here we see an existential dimension of the song,

5:47 where meaning and purpose are expected to be given

5:51 by “someone” or “something.” And before our great purpose becomes apparent,

5:56 we’re just aimlessly going through life,

5:59 and time becomes something to ‘kill’ rather than use.

6:03 So, why even think about the future?

6:07 Doesn’t the future take care of itself?

6:15 The song quickly takes another turn

6:17 as the realization dawns that time has passed quickly.

6:21 “And then one day you find ten years have got behind you,” as the lyrics put it.

6:27 These words seem to imply that the passage of time has suddenly become an issue.

6:33 While in our younger years, we felt time was abundant,

6:37 now we see that the years have flown by.

6:41 We often notice a significant increase in speed during our twenties,

6:46 when we prepare ourselves for grown-up life.

6:49 Many pursue higher education or learn a trade,

6:53 preparing for the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids, the serious life.

6:58 And usually, during this preparatory phase, we are full of expectations,

7:03 aware of the many possibilities the future holds.

7:08 But then, there’s that displeasing mismatch between expectation and reality.

7:13 Time went by so fast.

7:15 You’re in your thirties now.

7:18 And despite once aspiring to become something more,

7:21 your diploma is now gathering dust in a drawer,

7:24 while you spend your days in a position you never really chose.

7:28 What have you been doing all these years?

7:32 How did you settle for such a meaningless job?

7:36 What happened?

7:38 Life happened—bills, setbacks, responsibilities, things you never planned for.

7:43 And so, whatever you dreamed of, it just didn’t work out.

7:49 You just went along, drifting wherever life pushed you.

7:54 “No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun,” as the song puts it.

8:00 And here the existential dimension becomes clear.

8:04 Because that “someone” or “something” you were

8:08 waiting for to guide you never appeared.

8:10 You woke up in the morning, checked your phone,

8:14 went to work, came home, distracted yourself, and repeat.

8:18 Days turned into weeks, weeks into years, as you waited for a sign,

8:24 a push, or perhaps even ‘permission’ to act, but the universe remained silent.

8:30 But from an existentialist viewpoint, there is no starting gun.

8:36 Whatever you make of your life is your responsibility.

8:45 Pressured by the societal imperative to achieve,

8:48 we might get desperate to make something of our lives.

8:52 We see our hopes and dreams fading as the likelihood

8:56 of ever achieving them becomes smaller every day.

9:00 Pink Floyd’s song describes it as running “to catch up with the sun,

9:06 but it’s sinking,” only to come up behind us again.

9:10 The older we get, the faster time seems to pass.

9:14 We can’t keep up anymore.

9:16 In an absolute sense, time doesn’t pass more quickly;

9:19 days and weeks are still as long as before.

9:22 But our lived experience of time,

9:25 as Henri Bergson observed, is a different story.

9:29 What used to be abundant is now scarce.

9:32 Time is ticking away, second by second, day after day, and we begin to feel it.

9:39 And what makes matters worse is that we’re degrading mentally and physically.

9:43 “Shorter of breath and one day closer to death,” as the song puts it.

9:50 So, we’re not only battling with time; we also have less vigor for the fight,

9:56 especially when we have to compete with younger, more energetic people.

10:01 And it’s frustrating.

10:03 Because we still want so much, but our bodies and minds cannot deliver.

10:08 It’s a bit like the ancient Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi put it,

10:13 stating that “life certainly has its limit,

10:16 while the mind does not.” And if we try

10:19 to fulfill the mind’s desires with a limited life, we’ll end up exhausted.

10:25 As the years grow shorter and death approaches,

10:28 we may begin to look back on life with regret.

10:33 Life then starts to unfold,

10:35 as Arthur Schopenhauer describes in Studies in Pessimism: When we’re young,

10:40 we’re “like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised.” We sit there,

10:45 excited, waiting for what’s to come.

10:47 But later, when we look back on those days,

10:51 we can only conclude that life “promised so much,

10:56 and then performed so little.” This feeling

11:00 of disappointment will dominate over every other, according to Schopenhauer,

11:04 and we’ll not even feel the need to name it:

11:08 “On either side it will be silently assumed.” And here,

11:11 he touches on the final lines of the song:

11:15 “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

11:18 The time is gone, the song is over,

11:22 thought I’d something more to say.” These lines echo

11:25 a famous idea from Walden by Henry David Thoreau,

11:29 in which he states that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet

11:34 desperation.” Thoreau saw this as the result

11:37 of people conforming to societal expectations,

11:40 such as the pursuit of possessions, status, and security.

11:44 And these people often forget to ask themselves: Is this the life I truly want?

11:52 The track actually continues with a reprise of Breathe,

11:56 another song from the same album, The Dark Side of the Moon.

12:00 For that reason, I’ve chosen not to include it in this analysis,

12:03 as it’s not really part of the main lyrics.

12:06 Now, let’s go back to my question at the beginning:

12:10 Why do we seem to waste so much of our lives,

12:13 often realizing it too late, when many opportunities have already passed?

12:23 In an interview, Roger Waters tells what inspired him to write the lyrics,

12:28 saying that he assumed that childhood and adolescence are

12:31 a preparation for “something that’s going to happen later.” But then,

12:36 at the age of 29, he suddenly realized:

12:39 “Hang on, it’s happening, it has been right from the beginning,

12:43 and there isn’t suddenly a line when the training

12:46 stops and life starts.” His realization is deeply existentialist.

12:52 As Jean-Paul Sartre mentioned, we are “thrown” into this world.

12:56 And from the moment we’re born,

12:58 we’re burdened by the freedom to create the ‘essence’ of our lives.

13:02 Or as Waters puts it in the interview: “To be here now, this is it.

13:08 Make the most of it.” The tragedy, of course,

13:11 is that we often realize this ‘too late’.

13:14 As the lyrics describe,

13:15 the harsh truth often confronts us after we’ve already wasted many years.

13:20 But at the same time,

13:22 the picture Waters paints is a very common human experience.

13:28 I think it’s important to remember

13:31 that the song speaks from a moment of realization:

13:34 the recognition that much of life has already passed unnoticed.

13:38 But that perspective is different from our ‘lived

13:41 experience’ when we were in the middle of it.

13:43 In hindsight, we see the chances we didn’t take, the opportunities we had,

13:48 the time we wasted, and the consequences of our actions, or inaction.

13:53 It’s easy to see what we should have done differently.

13:57 And with that comes regret, sometimes even self-punishment.

14:02 But aren’t we too hard on ourselves then?

14:04 Because, in many cases,

14:06 we come to understand opportunities after they’ve passed.

14:10 As philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once realized:

14:13 “Life can only be understood backwards,

14:16 but it must be lived forwards.” Perhaps we waste our lives because,

14:21 when we’re younger, we simply don’t know any better.

14:24 We experience time differently and don’t truly feel how

14:28 finite it is until it begins to gather speed.

14:31 But by the time we realize we’ve been

14:34 on autopilot and start setting our own course, the tank is already half empty.

14:39 And there’s no way to refill it.

14:42 And that’s the tragedy of it.

14:44 When possibilities are abundant, awareness is not.

14:48 But by the time awareness grows, many of them are already gone.

14:59 Thank you for watching.