Time is your most valuable commodity—spend it wisely
“I don’t have the time” is probably the single most common excuse prevalent in our society today for not taking action, be it politically, socially or even creatively. With all of the pressures in our modern world surrounding work and family it seems to us to be the most legitimate of reasons for not stepping up.
The results of this trend are legion. Service clubs and organizations across the nation are wilting under a staggering burden of burnout as they seek to accomplish maintaining even the status quo in their good works as the pool of willing volunteers shrinks with each passing day.
Time is our most valuable asset in life. None of us knows with any certainty just how much of it we have in reserve or when our time will be up—although we often act as though there is a bottomless reserve that we can draw from, putting off until tomorrow so many things that we should be doing today.
We put off telling our loved ones how we feel about them. We tell ourselves we will go and visit our shut in friends and relatives… next week. But too often, someone’s time runs out. The friend or relative dies lonely and forgotten in the nursing home, we die without telling our children how much we love them, the meter of our lives has no gauge with which to count our remaining days, hours, minutes or seconds.
Wikwemikong author Kenn Pitawanakwat noted this fact most eloquently during the recent launch of his new book.
One moment we are lamenting the loss of a mutual friend over a cup of tea or coffee, the next we are attending the funeral of the person across the table from us—or they ours.
In the final analysis time is really all we have to offer the world—but how we choose to spend that time is often puzzling to us upon reflection. Strangely, we too often choose to spend that so very limited of resources without truly weighing the cost or the benefits of what we are spending our time on.
Too often we choose the easy path of sitting down to keyboard and mouse. Our social efforts reduced to a few mouse clicks or keyboard strokes on Facebook, perhaps a comment or two on a facile meme that catches our fancy or sharing a YouTube video of an oddly behaving feline or kangaroo.
Our world and our communities would be much richer places if we were to each choose to invest our most precious resource a little more judiciously. It can even be an investment of time into something that benefits ourselves. Those who enjoy fishing can take the time to be part of fish stocking programs such as those operated by local fish and game clubs, or coming out to the south shore salmon revitalization meeting being put on by Expositor Salmon Classic organizer Dave Patterson.
Those concerned about the way their town is being run can take an evening or two a month to attend a council meeting. If the country or province is your concern, become involved in a political party or movement that seeks to address those concerns. If there is something in your community that is lacking, find a way to fill that need. Many hands make light work and there is plenty of good that you can put your hand to—just don’t say that you don’t have the time, because in the end, that is really all you do have—it is how you choose to spend it that counts.