Direction

For one man to tall another man that he must take a random amount of time and spend it in isolation working on something like his philosophy and his own happiness, is like one man telling another man that he needs to go sit in a room for ten years to grow out a magnificent beard. He will say, look back to this ten years I spent in this room, and look at the pictures of me with a magnificent beard I had when I emerged. He will say, look, this other friend of mine also spent ten years in a room and look at this picture of him when he got out, he too had a great and full beard. You can also then suggest that this great and magnificent beard you grew in those ten years had some sort of irreversible and irreplaceable impact on your life after that. But what is unsaid, because there is no evidence supporting it, is that the same beard would have grown in any living situation, and to stay locked up in that room for all those years did not produce the beard. Time did.

Further on person can not tell another person anything about time when in their right mind. His language will fail him. What he thinks he is communicating about time and "should"s and "shouldn't"s is being completely muddled by a failure of his language. The ideas he wants to share are positive; He learned a lesson that had a great positive impact on his life when he spent his time this way, and while he was spending his time another way, the time was wasted. You are right now spending your time that way, and I implore you to spend it this way. Do not bother learning the lesson I had to learn; instead you should skip it. Take my word for it, you don't want to know that stuff. Your time will be better spent like this; it was for me, and it will be for you.

Unfortunately, telling someone else about how to better use their time is similar to telling them how to like better music. If you give a good argument, they will listen. They will see some points and they will listen to your favorite music. They may even enjoy the tunes and they may change their tastes because of it. But, it is a fact that you can not change a person's taste in music. They will still have their own favorite songs. Good music, and good ways for different men to use their time on earth are not mutually exclusive of each other.