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I must confess an unpopular opinion: to me, wasting time is a myth. Every second we spend doing something, no matter how relevant or important it seems, is formative in making us who we are now. To me, every second I spend doing anything is part of God’s plan in making me more like Jesus Christ. Time wasted is time not spent as planned, not explicitly devoted to our goals, but the beauty of life is that it doesn’t go as we plan most of the time, when we can give up control in instead of forcing it.
I can speak to my own personal experiences, that even all those weeks I wasted away in middle school addicted to video games and spent playing MMORPGs weren’t wasted. Yes, those were days I didn’t understand the value of moderation, but those were times where I learned how much the “massively multiplayer” and communal aspect of gaming mattered to me much more so than the games itself. It was where I recognized how much I needed connection and community in my life, and was a precursor to the real communities I have now that I cherish and contribute to all the more because of those times.
In addition, the time I spent indulging in my various addictions was time I couldn’t have learned the lessons I needed to learn any other way. As unpopular as it was to say, those addictions were the means by which I both hid and confronted and coped with more serious…
