Your gift of time

The gift of life you were given at your birth is really a gift of time on planet earth. Nobody really knows what is the amount of time you have from now to your death. What we know is that you cannot make more time for yourself, save time for later, or buy time from others.

Your time is therefore very precious, whether you realize it or not. How you spend your time really matters. You can waste your time aimlessly or you can focus your time purposefully on your goals and priorities in life. The choice is yours.

Of course, you need to take care of things that require your immediate attention, like any real emergencies. If your child is sick, you need to bring him or her to a doctor or a hospital. If your car broke down, you need to bring it to the garage. If you water tap is leaking, you need to fix it. You get the concept of attending to emergencies.

More importantly though like Stephen Covey, I like to spend the majority of my life on the important but not urgent things in my life. For example, I like to nurture my loving relationships with my family members and close friends. I spend a lot of time on my personal and professional development and growth.?I focus my energy and time on my health and wellbeing. Therefore, self-care and self-assessment take a major chuck of my time. Travelling and vacations are high up on my priorities. These will be whatever are important to you but are not necessarily urgent to do.

Of course, you should eliminate all activities that are neither important nor urgent in your life. You can spend hours in front of your television, laptop or smart phone aimless flipping and viewing unimportant stuffs. Some people like to lay in bed for hours after you are already awakened without any purposeful reasons. Others like to get together and gossip about other people for hours on end. Worse still, alcoholics and drug addicts spend hours under the influence of alcohol or illicit and synthetic drugs. Anyway, you get the idea.

When you are reading to your child in the evening, before tucking him or her loving in bed, it’s not accidental, you make a choice to use of your time wisely. When you are fully present to your espouse at home or a family reunion, you are giving him or her your gift of time and attention. When you take time off your work to attend your child’s school graduation or parents-teachers meeting, you are gifting your precious time your loved ones. When you take your time to visit a friend who is not feeling well, it’s much better and meaningful than sending a bouquet of flowers. When you choose to volunteer your time to serve at your local food bank or at the public library, you are gifting your precious time to others in need.

Make sure you know how and with whom you are spending your precious time, and you’ll have little or no regrets at the end of your life.