With gentle lyricism, but with her feet well placed on the ground, a poet woman wrote in 1987 the following:
I don’t wish you any good.
I wish you only what almost everyone lacks.
I wish you time, to have fun and to laugh:
if you use it well, you’ll make the most of it.
I wish you time for your actions and your thoughts,
not just for your sake,
but also for the benefit of others.
I wish you time,
not to make you feel it happen,
but for you to get into it.
Time for you to experience the stupor
and time for you to grow up and mature.
I wish you time to feel
hope and love.
There’s no point leaving that for the future.
I wish you time to find yourself;
to live in fullness every day
and welcome every hour as a gift.
I wish you time to forgive.
I wish you time for life.
Elli Michler (1923-2014).
How much is your time worth?
“Time is gold,” says a saying circulating all over the world. It’s a way of saying time is worth a lot. But in practice, how much is your time worth?
Your time has the value you assign to it yourself, depending on the good deeds you do.
Time as such is nothing more than the succession of the facts that are being verified or the actions that are being fulfilled. It’s a power value, you have to make cash.
Whoever doesn’t do any good deeds wastes his time.
The one who engages in wrongdoing, dirtys the time available to him.
The anxious one would like to see time run and does not realize that it is his own anxiety that runs fast.
The clumsy wastes his time on useless things, while the sage invests him in study and research to contribute to the progress of the world.
Give yourself time for the positive things you can and should do and use it smartly. He who does not value his time loses the best opportunities of his life, for time passes at equal speed for the lazy and for the diligent.
It matters a lot, too, to do everything in due course.
Manage your time well
For success in life it counts a lot to know how to program. Since time is a value, you have to know how to manage it, as it is done with a savings fund or with a legacy capital. If you are able to follow these rules, you will become a good administrator of your time:
1. schedule the activities of the month, week, day, so that you dedicate to each the time and attention it requires;
2. do each thing at the right time; “There is a time for everything,” the Bible teaches (cf. Chap. 3 of the Ecclesiastes); Renato Leduc’s famous sonnet about time begins by saying, “Wise virtue of knowing time, in time to love and untie in time,” and ends with a blunt verse: “the wicked joy of wasting time”;
3. Reserve some of your daily time for your culture and recreation; don’t be afraid of healthy, moderate recreation;
4. considers that every day an unforeseen event may arise, or the opportunity to help others; do not take that as a waste of time, but as an optimal investment of it;
5. Be an administrator, but not a slave to your time.
Ramon, the busy
Ramon, who neither studied nor worked, had the complex very busy. At least that was the impression he gave, especially when he was invited to serve or participate in a cultural event. “I can’t, I have a lot of things to do,” “You know I don’t have time for that,” were common phrases in him. One day, two of his friends went to visit an elderly lady they had met since they were children and who had been in bed for a few weeks. The sick woman’s nephew was moved by this gesture of kindness, and at the time of firing them he made them a proposal: “In my business I need two people of trust, and you seem to me to be ideal candidates. If you’re interested, come to my office tomorrow.” When they told Ramon how lucky they had been, Ramón kicked them in the face that they had not invited him, and they answered him almost in un place. “It’s just that you’re always very busy.”
There are many people in society like Ramon: they are very cared for in doing nothing. Not that they are inactive; in fact they are always entertained in something, but not in a serious job. In addition, they constantly change their activity. They don’t finish one thing when they’re already in another. They are neither diligent nor constant. Deep down, they’re selfish and lazy. They are guided not by duty but by a passing taste, which fades as soon as there is a need for greater effort or sacrifice. For these people, time is a meaningless river: it neither carries fish nor fertilizes the land. It just happens.
Lost time doesn’t recover
Man has always been fascinated by playing imaginatively over time. In both ancient and modern literature, there are quite a few works in which the author revels in going back or moving forward, with his imagination, to what happened in the past or to what will happen in the future. We also see this in movies and plays. It’s not a fun, because in fact the past is unrepeatable and the future is something that doesn’t exist yet. Marcel Proust developed his masterpiece (In Search of Lost Time) not as a setback in time, but as a journey with memory, evoking and almost re-creating experiences already lived. In Proust, the term “wasted time” does not amount to wasted time.
The time that is wasted miserably is always unrecoverable. Also when someone says, “I’ll catch up later,” that’s not why they’ll make up for the time they wasted. Indeed, even if he managed to “catch up” on some activity he had neglected, he no longer carried out or carried out the works he may have done in lost time.
Healthy “pastimes” and entertainments, when lived in moderation, are not wasted time but healthy recreations. They cease to be when they generate a dependency and live uncontrolled, such as spending many hours in front of the TV or in board games… Usually, people who lead an orderly life, do not deprive themselves of recreation, but show preference for what is profitable and constructive: reading, visiting a museum or exhibition, friendly dialogue, encountering nature, meditation…
Well said the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “A superficial person only thinks about passing the time; a smart person thinks about taking advantage of it.” Ω
Be the first to comment