The Irony of time
Isn’t time a weird thing?
We say:
“I have no time to do what that”
“I have no time to exercise, eat, sleep, meet friends and family, do what I love, no time for …[ill in the gap]
Some of us use time more efficiently than others though we all have the same 24 hours in a day.
Some of us have plenty of time
Some of are time deprived
Some of us use time as our ally and some of us use time as our enemy
Some of us have figured a way to use time in the most effective way, with precession, every minute planned and spent wisely.
Whereas some of us are in a constant race against time.
One thing we might not fully realise is that our time is limited and we never know when our time will be up.
We create bucket lists and make future plans and say things like: “In 5 years I’ll do this or the other but in reality we have no control over that.”
And what we fail to realise in all this haste, is that TIME IS NOW. Whatever it is that we want to do and we kept postponing for years there’s no better time than now.
But we give ourselves excuses…. so many excuses, we justify things in our head through the same biased lens we use for years and then we comfort ourselves with the thought: “One day I will do what I really want to do”
But that “one day” never comes because you haven’t given yourself the time, you haven’t been intentional about that and next thing you know time has raced so much that it has now been 5 years or more.
When people say “I have no time” what they actually mean is “I don’t want to make time for this”
“This is the last day of your life, how would you spend it?” (I cringe reading this and roll my eyes every time I hear it)
But really what would you do?
I often contemplate this and act more intentional (for a while at least) only to forget again. Someone dies and then I’ll say to myself: “I’ll live my life even more intentionally to honour that person’s death, to go about living the way I want and leave the legacy I dream of behind.”
When my cousin passed away unexpectedly in his early 40s over 2 years ago it felt surreal and I made myself this promise that I will be even more intentional and experience life more fully. Which I do most days as I think back at him often.
But the reality is, some days I simply forget because I get too distracted with mundane things, with the minutiae of everyday life and it’s easy to lose focus of what actually matters and how to set time aside for that. And I suspect I am not alone in that.
I want to have this as a reminder not just for me but for you too.
Time isn’t limitless
It is the most important currency; time abundance is richness
Time spent doing what you love with people you love is time well spent and well invested.
Time spent working on yourself is time spent wisely because you discover and rediscover things about yourself. You get to grow and figure out how to improve and what to improve.
Time spent creatively brings joy
Time spent with loved ones makes us immensely happy.
How are you spending your time?
What would you love to do with your time that you’re not doing
And if you aren’t, why not? What are you waiting for?
Time expands, then contracts, and in tune with the stirrings of the heart
Haruki Murakami
