Rev. Brent L. White

The Atlantic magazine had an article last month that began with these words:

One of the truisms of modern life is that nobody has any time. Everybody is busy, burned out, swamped, overwhelmed. So let’s try a simple thought experiment. Imagine that you came into possession of a magical new set of technologies that could automate or expedite every single part of your job.

What would you do with the extra time? Maybe you’d pick up a hobby, or have more children, or learn to luxuriate in the additional leisure. But what if I told you that you wouldn’t do any of those things: You would just work the exact same amount of time as before.^[1]

That’s precisely what a new study concludes. We’ve bought a lot of time-saving gadgets over the past hundred years—like refrigerators and freezers. Food keeps much longer, therefore fewer trips to the store. Therefore more time, right? Wrong… We spent that extra time at this new thing called a “supermarket” in order to keep the refrigerator well-stocked. But surely washer and dryer saved us a lot of time, right? No… We just ended up buying a lot more clothes and doing laundry much more frequently than we used to. Vacuum cleaners just put pressure on us to spend more time cleaning floors. You get the picture. Work expands to fill the available time. So we never get ahead.

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My good friend Hugh, the pastor at Lavonia United Methodist, was appointed to Lavonia the same time I was appointed here. And the first week he was in Lavonia, he joined a gym in Toccoa, and he said, “Join this gym. We’ll go together.” “Great!” So I went to this gym and talked to the guy, and it was a little pricey, and they required a three-year contract. I didn’t know gyms did that anymore. So I didn’t sign up for it. And I’m glad I waited, because just a few weeks later I saw that Planet Fitness was opening; it was cheaper; no contracts; hydro-massage chairs; plus I need to go to a gym that is a “Judgment-Free Zone,” where the risk of “Gymtimidation” is low. I mean, look at me! I’m someone who easily gets “gym-timidated.”

So I called Hugh to rub it in. “Hugh, I’m glad I didn’t join your gym. I’m going to join Planet Fitness instead.” And he said, “Oh, I’ve already joined.” “Wait, you already joined a gym—with a three-year contract! How did you get out of the contract?” “Eh… I’m a member of both gyms.” 

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