Some days ago, I was talking to a friend who couldn't wrap her head around what she was meant to do with her time and her life. Apparently, she had a list of things Lined up that she wanted to do, and I couldn't help but notice that these things were too bulky to undertake, even though I knew she was capable, I still felt that undertaking too much was going to put a lot of pressure on her especially when she realizes halfway that she might have undertaken too much, but then it has become too late to turn back.
There are times in life when having some quality idle time can create the illusion that one's lazy and have no plans for their life
This imminently confines us to panic
When you watch a lot of motivational speakers, their modus operandi is always focusing on time, creating the guilt that having too much TV or sleep time is the main reason why people are poor or why they're underachievers. We create emphasis on the usage of time, there's the illusion that 24 hours of our time must have an essence, that which hours that pass, we must create accountability, else, we might just live a life of waste without really making any impact.
While this is actually true, I believe that the "time" we mostly do not think we should account for is when we're out sick. I mean, no one would ever think of the money they'll lose in their business when they're in a hospital bed. This is because we do not calculate material loss when the loss of health is imminent. It's quite ironic that people mostly see money as the most important thing and immediately their health is on the line, material loss becomes inconsequential. It is like their ideologies change, their mindset tilts and they go against their financial principles or standards if it means getting back their health.
The biggest opportunity cost in life
No one checks the time they were out sick or battling one health issue or another, this is because everything we believe in comes down crashing when the possibility of death is imminent. People treasure materialism a lot, and some others live in the cocoon of their wealth. However, no matter how smart these people are at predicting the future possibilities in their lives, they still cannot place their fingers on the reality of unforeseen circumstances. Time is something I treasure a lot, and this is because the times we're mostly inactive, maybe sleeping, watching TV, or having a nice time out is the most important period of our lives and not when we hit the first million or billion.
The fulfillment of money is generally beautiful.
When people hit financial milestones, the feeling is incomparable, because they're mostly memorable. One's standards of living are improved, but these things are not even what matters the most when stable health is not there to enjoy them. Externally, the pressure is there. In the media, there's the rush to make money, people are listening to podcasts condemning how they live, and they have favorite people on TV, shifting their default ideologies.
When we focus on the competition in life, it becomes quite easy to see ourselves as failures. There are stages we get to in life, and we inadvertently incur haste as one of our habits, because we mostly associate aging with inadequacy and redundancy. The different circumstances in which different people are born to create default mentalities in them.
For example, in Nigeria, a person whose parents are not financially buoyant is expected to thread different paths other than the ones their parents have threaded. But people who are born in wealth are often expected to toe the line of their parents since that path is tested, trusted, and proven.
Some people might see time differently, depending on their background, while some people who are desperate for a point to prove in life would undertake a lot of commitments in life, hoping they'll hit it big. One thing I've come to understand is that we cannot be the version of people we create in our minds.
No Matter how brilliant or astonishing we deem ourselves to be, our expectations of the reality we wish to live might not be what we completely get at the end of the day. This isn't bad, if everyone aims for the moon and hits it simultaneously, then we have to deal with the problem of congestion. Let's be realistic, the sky is not big enough for everyone to fly and I say this connotatively. This is because there are people who want bigger chunks of the skies for themselves. These are the people who believe it's in their right to have more than they deserve, and trying to compete with these people would naturally deprive one of the abilities to bask in the little they've accomplished in life.
We see time differently
but this isn't to say every time we have is meant for a purpose. There's no greater purpose than living for ourselves. Sometimes, we tend to calculate time differently and this is why we cannot associate a particular period with when we need to work or play. Life is unpredictable, so some of our actions need to be spontaneous.
We can work, rest and play at the same time while allowing ourselves to enjoy every second, minute, hour, or year that we are alive. This isn't a backyard way of promoting complacency, because this would be terrible. It's important to look at the time we have, see the moment as the most important time of our lives, and deal with it accordingly.
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