Time

A friend and I were chatting the other day and maturity was somehow brought up.


My friend likes younger mature men, “Maturity has nothing to do with age,” she said defensively.



“True,” I agreed, “Maturity has nothing to do with age, but it may have something to do with time and how you spend it.”

“But age is time, so what are you getting at?” queried my friend.

“You may be old, but spent all your years for useless endeavours, on the other hand, you can be young but have maximized all of your time to be most productive.”

Then I explained my weird logic.


We have 24 hrs in a day. Our usual routine would include sleeping 6-8 hrs of them. We work for another 8 hrs. We take a bath and dress up for another hour and maybe another if you’re the type who showers twice or more in a day.


We spend eating for 3 hrs (including breakfast, lunch, dinner and maybe snacks in between).


That’s a total of 21 hours spent already, leaving us 3 hours on average for all sorts of stuff that we can choose to spend our time on.


So how do we spend our 3 hours?


Of course with our (modern) busy world, we try to squeeze in experiencing life and learning from it with all our activities.


You may use your allotted 3 hours of eating time with friends, chatting and learning from each other.

Of course if you use your 8 hours of work for other than, well, work, that may be a bad thing.


We sleep 8 hours a day. Thus, we’re asleep for 122 days cumulative, which is one third of our year already wherein we’re prolly dead to the world.


And the other two thirds?


Well, I hate math, so I do hope you get my drift.


We learn from life, but in reality, have little time to learn from it.

Whether we spend it with family, friends, work or maybe even alone, it depends really on our priorities.


I’ve recently realized that I gave most of my time to work, little to my friends and less than little for loved ones.


Do I feel like I’ve missed out on life?


Yes.


I feel stagnant at times. Growing mosquito larvae for dengue like an animal farm.


With no specific development. With little bonding time with the ones who deserve it most.


Again, what has time gotta do with maturity?


It lies on where you allot your time.


Do you spend it on unessesary socializing other then being with a friend in need, or attending your son’s recital?


Do you spend it more on spending and less on thinking of other sources to increase your spending power, a business perhaps?

Do you spend it learning about the new gossip rather than on more valuable knowledge, maybe world events like what happened in Japan? Remember, great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, small people talk about other people.

So this is why I hate wasting time. This is why I hate being late and hate late comers equally.


Because you might never know, it may already be too late to even do things right. And I never really liked regrets.


For today we execute, tomorrow we plan, while yesterday can never be undone.


For it is with these little time of ours that we use to grow up and grow old gracefully.


So feel young, but think old.


Because time, after all, is gold.


(wala lang, nag rhyme eh, walang pakialamanan)