“Spending Our Time”

Let’s presume your lifespan is finite. Limited. In other words, you only have a certain number of minutes to your name. What if you considered the days and minutes of your life as currency worth – say - $1 per minute? And, how you spend these minutes is how you spend your life. Minutes are the dollars you spend. What you do with and in each minute defines how you are spending your finite resources.


If this were true – and so far our “presumptions” are well-grounded in fact – it would give pause for greater awareness of how we spend our time.


It often gets dicey, though. Because we complicate things with ideas about saving, borrowing and interest. “I’ll work at this job that I hate for 50 years of my life so that I can afford to live the life I want when I’m 70.” Using basic math skills we can see that for this basic (well known) formula to work, the payoff at age 70 will need to be mighty hefty to be worth the price of 50 years of life. And, one could argue, would need to include “interest” to compensate for the suffering of the soul during that time.

This does not mean we shouldn’t work. But, what if we redefine “work” to mean aligning ourselves with what we can most aptly do that is true to our spirit in the service of contributing to others? If we feel like we need to check our true self in at the door when we enter our workplace, we are enforcing a heavy fine on our very life just for the privilege of doing that work. Asking ourselves whether we are contributing in the ways that also make us happy (the sure definition of being on track with how we “spend our time”) is a sane question.

There are many, many opportunities to apply ourselves in the world today – for good. Please do not restrict yourself only along the lines of what is familiar to you. If your heart is unhappy with the way you spend your time, open to the possibility of doing something different.

Because, in the end, what we have done each minute of each day is how we will have spent this one precious life that is ours.