The Gift of Time

At this time of the year when gifts are certainly a prevalent thought in everybody’s mind, let us look at the other gifts there are that we seldom consider. There are gifts we may give or be given other than the usual, precious presents that the eye cannot see and the hand cannot hold. 

One such gift is time. It is a gift we can give not only to others, but to ourselves as well. Although time may seem to not have much value in itself, how we use it can potentially make it valuable. It’s entirely up to us.

When we use time to welcome hurt and suffering into our life, time is a curse to be avoided. Yet, when we use time to spread love and goodwill, we have an important element for making life beautiful.

Time is a gift we are given. It is the greatest equalizing factor for all beings. No one has any more time than the other. One minute has sixty seconds for all, rich or poor.

But we can choose to have either plenty of time or too little; we can waste our time away, or use it wisely as we would any rare and precious resource.

A lifetime is like a finite reserve from which we incessantly take from in perfect regularity, until it’s all depleted. The tricky thing is—we’ll never know how much total lifetime we’d been allotted until it’s all used up.

Time is incontainable, irreplaceable and irreversible. There is no way one can make a deposit of time to augment the original amount he has been given. A moment that passes is gone forever. We can either use it or lose it.

There is really no such thing as lack of time. There is plenty of time for what is important. Being “too busy” is a lame excuse. If something really matters to us, we can make the time for it.

There are many people who are much busier than us and yet are able to do what they consider to be important undertakings. Margaret Mitchell was working full time at a newspaper when she wrote the novel Gone With The Wind. Julius Caesar was fighting battles and only had the short intervals between clashes to write, in his tent at night, his great speeches. These people didn’t have a single minute more than the time we have.

Yet making the most of our time is not about fanatical clockwatching. It’s not about reducing our life to a series of mechanical routines. This will take the life out of living and make it an uninteresting, even excruciating experience. It’s about taking control and asserting our creative participation in the passing of each moment.

Some people are always making lists, always updating their lists, and then losing them. When confronted with a task to do, they tend to spend much time intellectualizing: considering every possibility, planning every detail, making sure that every angle is covered. They dissect the task to the smallest details and, consequently, don’t get around to doing anything else.

These people are more interested in being organized than in accomplishing anything. If they’re not able to do what they planned for today, they just make a better plan for tomorrow. Too much planning blinds them to other options and new opportunities.

On the other extreme are those that are so busy doing things with no time to assess the necessity of their efforts. Just like the obsessive planners, they lack spontaneity and flexibility. With every minute of their time filled with activity, there is not a moment left for relaxing and enjoying the fruits of their labor. Living, to them, has become an obligation, not the privilege that it is.

We need a certain degree of structure in the use of our time, of course. But we need spontaneity, too. There must be balance. We shall use our time properly to attain personal, professional and economic growth, without alienating our loved ones or endangering our health.

We shall also have time for other people. Spending time with others is enriching for both us and them. Likewise, we must take time for rest and reflection, but avoid habits that simply waste time away.

The greatest reward of all in gaining control over the use of our time is freedom—the power to live life the way we want to. 

We can manage our time, think up creative ways to use it, find the opportunities for things we want to do and enjoy life a lot more. Effective use of time means selecting the best task to do from all the possibilities available, and then doing it the best way we can.

Making the right choices about how to use our time is more important than doing efficiently whatever job happens to be around. Efficiency is okay, but effectiveness has much more practical value.

Let us, therefore, try to be more prudent in our use of time, and learn to master it in order to attain what matters most to us. We shall look into the future with great expectation, but not forgetting to live in the present with a sense of celebration.

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