Time. It’s our most valuable resource, yet for half our lives we think we have enough. Hell, we think we’re immortal for a good part of our lives, as if we have all the time in the world. Youth, is wasted on the young; retirement, on the old. But all of that is just to say we’re human. We suffer.
And as I talk about in Episode 37: The Currency of Life, Time is a resource. It’s something we SPEND. We spend our time doing x, y, z. We spend it at work. We spend it in traffic. Hopefully, we spend some doing things we love. We exchange time for money, to buy things to do with our time. Then we don’t have any time to do those things because we want more money. And so on, and so on.
It’s like the parable of the fisherman. Here is a version, lifted from my friend Paul Gadola’s facebook page (learn about Paul in Curiosity Interview 1: Paul Gadola):
“There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished. “This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said. The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?” The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.” The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.“ I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.” The fisherman continues, “And after that?” The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.” The fisherman asks, “And after that?” The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!” The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
What would you rather be spending your time doing?
Time IS limited, and what you do with yours can make or break how you feel when you die. I often think about how I will feel on my proverbial deathbed (if I’m lucky enough to go out with a minute to ponder such things). What will I think of how I spent my time?
Preview video here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1298895537151228
Link to original post: https://chrisburcher.com/2020/09/25/kew-episode-22-time/
