Can’t save it. Can’t Kill it. Can’t spend it.
It’s About Time
A positive and negative tool we use to measure our lives.
Life measured as a timeline.
When people imagine their life in terms of time, it is often linear. The line usually has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning refers to birth and all the things that happened before now. The middle refers to now and the end of the line refers to death.
We can only hope that the line that goes from now to the end of the line will be a nice long line, but this is not guaranteed.
Time is a fantastic measuring tool.
The main use of our time goes towards making agreements about where events go on our timeline. On the timeline we can place things before now and after now. We also refer to these parts of the timeline as past and future.
Time is useful for measuring history. For example, a birthday is a fun way people track time. We understand the historical meaning of the following statement:
“The date of his birth was January 1st, 2020”.
Time is a handy tool for organizing. Time is a brilliant concept for aligning schedules. We use time to organize and coordinate lives with others on their own timeline. A simple way we do this would be the following agreement:
“Okay Sally, I will meet you at the coffee shop at 11:00 am.”
What else can we do with time?
Other than organizing and placing events on the timeline, we can’t do much with time.
Still, when the topic is time, there are many profound metaphors people throw around. Think of all the ways people pretend that we have control over the obscure minutes of our lives.
Sure, people may say they can help you “save time” but I have never seen minutes in a pile anywhere.
As great as it would be, I have never heard of anyone figuring a way to stockpile minutes.
If Minutes Could Be Hoarded — This Is What It Would Look Like I imagine a vault, similar to the cartoon of the Disney version of Scrooge. He was a surly, old and wealthy duck with a top hat and a vault as big as a house that he was often seen in — swimming in gold coins.
Time is a troll.
We cannot actually collect all the extra minutes after we “save time” so it makes sense that we probably can’t go to the store later and “spend time” either. Darn.
So — I can’t save time and I can’t spend time. Why am I so wrapped up in the worry that comes with tracking time? Time seems like a nuisance if you think about it.
All the problems in the world can be blamed on the unknown allotment of our minutes.
When you recall of all of the things that people experience that are negative, many of the bad days can be blamed on our limited rations of time.
- Late for work? This can make anyone feel stressed out. Being 15 minutes behind schedule can sometimes ruin an entire day or more.
- Disgusted when you see the news? We have wars over oil in the ground. The oil is valuable because it is used to fuel our vehicles. Our vehicles are valuable because they get us to work. SHIT! We are 15 minutes late for work!
- Angry at your spouse for going to bed early instead of getting wild in the sheets? Time for bed, honey, the alarm clock is going to buzz in a few hours.
- Feeling annoyed at a neighbor who is telling too long of a story? All those minutes you could have been opening your mail, gone forever.
- Overwhelmed when you finally get to open the mail because bills are past due? We really could use a few of those “wasted” minutes right now to catch up on stuff.
The point is … all of these bad experiences can be narrowed down to a root problem. The problem is- we have a limited amount of minutes while we live.
Since we are not given a specific amount of time- we really never know exactly how much we have left. Not knowing how much is left is a cause for problems. This irritates and depresses most people and they don’t even realize it.
When I first had this realization- I laughed. I could not believe how silly all my arguments had been over the years. All the days of crying instead of playing games seemed utterly stupid. Still do.
Mortality is the issue here. The fact that our timeline has an end and that we don’t know how soon that will be — that is the reason we have bad days.
Instead I want to gather up my courage and string together more good days. I don’t want to kill time. I want to enjoy time.
I don’t want to kill time. I want to enjoy time.
Check this out when you have … extra time.
In a podcast I recorded after my dad died I touched on the topic of minutes. I was sad during those days, but the topics were interesting — and you may enjoy this. I warn you now, my way of coping with grief is not typical. Here is a link to one episode — enjoy.
Here is a link to the song that I sang in the above podcast. It is the song I often think of while pondering the concept of time — as a way to pass the time.
Time is up!
Got ya.
