In one currency, we are all given
the same amount; time. Rich or poor, old or young, talented or not, we
all get the same dole of time each and every day that we are alive. Once
spent, we can’t retrieve even one second of time once it is gone. It
doesn’t matter if you’re the President or a blue collar worker, you will
all be given the same precious commodity of time.
Many talented people make the most of their time and find ways to be
productive. Some wastefully squander their allotment of time. Whether
you value time or waste it, it marches on. Time ticks on and most aren’t
even aware of its passing. The problem, especially for highly
distractive, busy, or uncaring people, is that we aren’t aware of the
gift of seconds, minutes, and days. I think that’s the attraction of
sayings like, “carpe diem”, (the quote is usually translated, “seize the
day”) was taken from a poem written in the Odes in 23 BC by the Latin
poet Horace. Wikepedia also included the translation, “trusting as
little as possible in the next day”. In odes 1.11 had another saying,”
Whether Jupiter has allotted you many more winters or this one”.
None of us knows how much time we really have, so we need to find the
treasure of time and guard it. Keeping the reality of a limited resource
like time will require watch care, attention, focus, and an ability to
prioritize how we will fill our elusive container of time. Each of us
much choose what we will spend our time on. This task of time allotment,
is both the most delicious and yet daunting task any of us will have.
There are so many choices to make in our modern society. If we even
look at the possible food choices we make each day, around 200 according
to researchers at Cornell University, we can get overwhelmed. How can
we be intentional about how to use our hoard of time? One tip I learned
from Michael Hyatt is to weed out things in your life that compete with
your main priorities. There are things that don’t get us closer to our
goals and waste our time. We need to take a hard look at where we want
to spend our days. Without goals we are like a ship without a
destination. No one but ourselves can decide what is important to us. We
are all driven by different values, priorities, and expectations in
life.
As
I write this there is a PBS special on Stephen Hawking. He lived with
the specter of death for most of his life. He decided to spend his life
trying to figure out how the universe began. What makes life worth
living for you, may not make sense to me. It is a worthy use of time to
think about our goals in life. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is
not worth living”. Life in Socrates’ days was much less predictable and
probably not as long as ours. The quest to deal with time valuing issues
is timeless.
It is a
treasure that normally can’t be taken away from us. While it is in your
power to decide I hope you and I will choose well.
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