Sense of Time

Today’s article just happened to pop up in my mind as I was replying to a comment this morning on the previous posting. I mentioned in my comment a statement that I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about in the past, but never wrote anything down on paper. The statement was “if I have time.” How often in your daily lives do you say those words or something to the same effect? Time, we all know it’s a finite number. There is nothing but time moving forward. We cannot pause, rewind, slow motion, or create extra time. We only have a set number of hours, minutes, and seconds to work with on any given day and a set number of months and years to live before our lives are complete. This of course, is nothing new. We all are self aware that we are finite beings with a finite time on earth. However, even with the internal knowledge of this limited resource, do we effectively utilize our time? Are we living or existing? Are we living our life or are we sustaining?

As I wrote yesterday, we are all selfish beings. It’s our human nature. As such, time is of course very important to us. Our time can never be replaced so it becomes one of the most important commodities in our lives. It’s more important than any tangible product can ever be valued at. There are other high value personal commodities in our lives: Love, Relationships, Acceptance, and Families to name just a few. However, the one thing time has over any of them is that it can be quantified. Time can be tracked. Time can be physically accounted for. The other high value personal commodities do not have numbers. They do not have quantities which can be tracked and rationalized. Even though we can physically watch time pass and it is one of the most important commodities we can ever have, do we treat it as such? Some people are extremely selfish with their time and ONLY use their time to serve their own purposes. Others are extremely giving with their time and spend the majority of their life serving and giving others. Who do you think is happier?

At times, I’m very selfish with my time. I can admit that, would you expect anything different? Honesty is the only true path to change in my opinion. Sometimes, there are things that I don’t want to do and I spend energy to avoid doing them. I spend more time and energy avoiding something than the time and energy it would have taken to do it in the first place. Ever have that happen to you? It reminds me of the fact that it takes more muscles to form a frown than it does to smile. We will actually cost ourselves time by not giving our time freely. In turn, what did we do with the time we did not give? Did we do something so important that it was personally necessary to not give up our time? More often than not, the answer is no. The whole issue comes down to the following tidbit of information. The first sentence of this paragraph contains the core issue: my time.

It is that simple. It’s MY TIME. Not yours, not anyone’s. It’s selfishness in the simplest form. We do not want to give it up. Time is very important. We will never get it back. I “might” need to do something with my time. If I give it away, I “might” not be able to do something I WANT to do. It comes down to a simple tradeoff. Do you believe your time is more valuable than others who need it? If you feel that your time is best served by focusing on yourself, then you will never give your time to others. We all have situations where we feel our time is more important. Most of us have a very tight leash on our time. We will only relinquish very small amounts of it and then it’s only because we have rationalized that we don’t have “anything better to do at the moment.” Are you a person who “hordes” your time or are you a person who freely gives it away? I would imagine that the majority of us fall into a middle category. We will give our time for things we deem appropriate or easy and horde our time when we are faced with something we don’t want to do or is too hard.

Why are we the judge? Are we judging the use of other people’s utilization of time? Would you want someone to judge your utilization of your time? Of course you wouldn’t. How can you have any defense for the jury about why you “needed” to watch television? How can you justify the wasted time you’ve spent shopping while other people could have used your help? I’m not saying we’re not supposed to have time of our own, but I am saying that if people ask for your time, you should have a VERY good reason to deny it. Time is a finite resource in our lives. However, it can also be affected by economies of scale. If we did everything on our own, our time would be consumed quickly and we could never accomplish anything. Life would move along at a snail’s pace. But, if multiple people give time to something, tasks are accomplished faster life moves forward.

What do you think if someone asks you to help them move? Jeez, I don’t want to do that, it’ll take half my Saturday (even though I had nothing planned). It’s hard. I don’t want to get bruised up. What about if someone asks you to help them accomplish something minor? Well, if it’s not too hard and it’s not out my way to help, I guess I’ll do it. It has to fit within my parameters before I give my time up. If we don’t allow our time to be given, the people in need of it will pay the price of our selfishness. That doesn’t seem right does it? If we give up some of our time to help others save time, we are helping them. They are not “costing” you anything more often than not, but yet if you deny them, you are costing them a portion of one of the most important resources we can ever know.

All I want to come from this article is that the next time someone asks you for your time, please give it careful consideration before turning them away. What are you doing with your time anyway? As I said in the first paragraph, are you existing or living with your own time? Is your time so much more important in your existence that you just cannot part with it? If you are living, you should be able to freely give your time to others in need. Existing is selfish. Remove the selfish reigns from your time and help serve other’s needs. A life of giving is rewarded by more than any weight in gold. The gift of time, can you put a price on that? Live your life and give your time.