“No time is wasted”
The Swarm“No time is wasted” is Ijitsineq Akesuk’s concise rejection of the idea that a detour diminishes a life. Spoken while he and Leon Anawak consider steering a sled around cracks, the phrase turns a practical delay into a disagreement over what time is and what makes a life worthwhile.
The detour and the meaning of time
Leon Anawak expects the route around the cracks to cost them time. Ijitsineq Akesuk counters that time remains the same whether they travel due east or take a longer route north. Arrival, he argues, is not the measure that gives time its value: life keeps unfolding along the way. His formulation, “Your life doesn't stop unfolding because you take a longer route,” develops the idea before he gives it its most compact expression: “No time is wasted.”
A cultural and familial consequence
Ijitsineq Akesuk connects the disagreement to the qallunaat, saying that they brought a way of thinking in which time spent waiting counts as wasted lifetime. He recalls that the community had once shared this belief, as had Anawak’s father. Unable to see how to do something useful with his life, Anawak’s father came to regard it as worthless—a life not worth living. Against that history, the phrase is not simply reassurance about a slow journey: it challenges the measure of human worth that equates a life with productive use of time.
