Volume 2 · The Discipline of Hours · Essay 31

Balloon Flying

Balloon Flying is a small handle on a large fact. Grip it, and the fact becomes easier to carry.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

A pressure cooker teaches more about time than any seminar: sealed, steady heat does in twenty minutes what an open pot cannot do in an hour. Attention is the lid.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. Carry it lightly. Ideas, like umbrellas, are useful only when actually opened.