The Value of Time

A Persons life is defined not by the large things that happen but by the miniscule choices that one makes every day. One thing that plays a large part in our decision making is time. People say that “stopping to smell the roses” is a waste of time, or that they don’t have time for this or that. They say, “Life is short, get done what you can.” Life is only short because we make it so. We don’t have time for the important things, only the urgent ones. The things that need doing now are what hold our attention. There are 86,400 seconds in every day and usually all 86,400 of them are stolen by unimportant urgency. We need to ask ourselves “What matters more?” We need to strictly sort out our priorities. People at the end of their lives say things like “If only I hadn’t chosen to…I wouldn’t be here.” or “If only that one person that one time hadn’t made that one decision, I would be a completely different person.” These decisions are dictated predominantly by time. The only truly unforgiving thing in this world is time. You can’t go back once you’ve gone forward. Every moment is someone’s first, and every moment is someone’s last. Life goes on from beginning to end. What will you do with your time? Choose what you will do with your time in a manner that you want be ashamed of when you reach eternity. I saw a t-shirt the other day that said, “Live your life so the pastor doesn’t have to lie at your funeral.” I know you have heard it a million and one times but don’t put off for tomorrow what you could get done today. This proverbial phrase has been lightly thrown around for years, but how can it be diligently applied? I cannot tell you that for I too struggle horribly with this issue. I have found that the American culture is a slave to the tyranny of Time. Almost every new invention that comes out is to make things easier and to fit them in to your “busy schedule” because you don’t have time to do it the other way. A few examples of these inventions are as follows: microwave ovens, Campbell’s soup to go, anything portable, fast food, e-mail replaces letters and cell phones replace home phones. I’m not saying these are bad things just making my point of how dependant Americans have become of things that are quick and easy so it doesn’t slow down their busy lifestyle. One of my favorite things to say when I’m joking around with my friends about how life is too hectic is “Stop the world I wanna get off!” I imagine the world spinning around at a super high speed and me jumping off into outer space where everything is calm and peacefully slow. Unfortunately though we cannot just jump off the world when life gets crazy, but we can make an effort to slow it down by prioritizing our priorities (my apologies for the redundancy). I hope this strikes a cord and that we can all, myself included, slowly begin to convert from unimportant urgency to non-urgent importance. I have one last question to leave you with. Why spend your life attaining your American dream and building your career only to find at the end of your life that you have passed things by and wasted all your strength and energy on working?