“Every soul shall taste death.”
Throughout my life, this line has buzzed through my skull like a faulty alarm clock that goes off irregularly, with no option to control how long the blare is to continue. This mental offset is often followed by a range of emotion, the most stable of which is wonder. A single, shapeless question, along the lines of, “what is the difference between me ceasing to exist right now than somedays later?” The answer, as you can expect has everything to do with time.
How often have you heard the phrase, ‘Time is money’? How often have you found yourselves agitated, with a pen in hand, trying to schedule your life around your goals? And more importantly how often, have you failed miserably, to use the tips and tricks you learned online, to convert your precious time into seemingly fruitful things such as money, a healthier body, in-demand education? Judging by the views on such videos on YouTube, I’d say a lot.
So why are you, and countless others like you, failing to do what should have been an easy task of making the best use of time? Is it because of the smartphones, exerting an irresistible gravity that pulls you into a black hole of distractions? Is it because of your surroundings, which is cluttered and untidy, preventing you from focusing on anything important? Or the people around you, who are so unsupportive and toxic, that your mental peace is at stake? While all of the above-mentioned factors play a role, the most important barrier to living your life to the full might very well be due to having an inaccurate or no understanding of the value of time.
The representation of time as a currency is a good one, but we shouldn’t view time as a substitute, or as a good to be exchanged for money. Because it’s the currency of life, it’s what stands between us and death. To think of time as a means of stacking those green papers, of buying the latest thing you don’t need, and as something to survive and tolerate through, is to treat it in a very cheap manner. And that translates to treating yourself very cheaply.
One of the most dangerous result of equating time to materialistic goods, is the feeling of ‘not having enough time’. Despite the influx of machineries that has made our life so simple, we somehow manage to be too busy for our friends and family, for the next volunteering program, to seek spiritual guidance, and also for our hobbies and interests. In the words of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “We have this tendency to trick ourselves into thinking we are not free, because being free to use your time as you please means that you have to make a choice and live with its consequences.”
And right now, being a citizen of the global village; that choice has become so much harder because we have so many options to choose from, in a very short lifespan. Almost like being in a fair, with only money to spare for bread. Choosing to do one thing means you’re sacrificing all the others and as we all know, sacrifice makes us uncomfortable. So instead, we stick to the clichéd excuse of “I don’t have enough time”. However we certainly do. We just need a lot of practice in prioritizing the options that gives more meaning to our lives and gives us a deeper connection to reality.
Your time is not cheap, it is your life. The way you invest it, will define how precious and valuable you are. You can get hundreds of tips and shortcuts on being more productive and efficient, but they will only prove useful as long as you know where you want to get in life. Just remember, it’s your life, the sooner you get behind wheels, the better. Because, fuel is running out!
Wordsmith: Labib al Barr
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