Dead time, hard time, and narrative redemption: Delimiting the life proper

Abstract Is every detail of your life a candidate for the meaningful, valuable, or worthwhile? If not, which do you exclude? Thaddeus Metz nominates “dead time”: the nail‐clipping, line‐waiting, traffic‐jam enduring, generally commonplace moments of our life. Dead time, while prevalent, is not remarkable. Metz recommends that we set at least some of it aside when evaluating life's meaningfulness and that we strive to minimize its occurrence. Against this, I contend dead time is a candidate for meaning in the same way as are more remarkable times of disvalue in life: the suffering, sacrifice, mistakes, efforts, etc. that form what I call “hard time.” Hard time is central to views that hold, as Metz does, that the value of a life as a whole derives, in large part, from the narrative redemption of hard time: we learn from the mistake, the effort pays off, etc. Hard time's capacity for redemption secures it a place within the life proper. But, I argue, dead time is likewise redeemable and also deserves a place. And although we can devise reasons for minimizing dead time in life, doing so exposes questionable elements and possible inconsistency within narrative accounts of whole life value generally.