Time is a ruthlessly fellow.
He does not care for anyone.
He cannot be bribed.
He cannot be cajoled
He cannot be constrained
The relationship we have with him can make all the difference.
I am pretty sure I would have been just like 90% of people around me who chat, play, and gossip all too often. They scroll and scroll. Don’t have a single goal.
Act like they have all the time in the world.
( I don’t judge them now, I know my circumstance, and my life is totally different now, and my relationship with time has changed over the years).
I started to realize the importance of time when my dad died. I remember him telling a couple of times he wanted to start some hotel of his own.
Then all of a sudden cancer visited him, and death took him away. I realised nothing is certain in life, if you want to do something in life do it as quickly as possible.
Many of my colleagues and friends might think why is he always working and busy.
The answer: I don’t have time. I have too many things to do. Many stories to tell, places to visit, dreams to achieve. I cannot spend an afternoon talking about bygone days.
I cannot stand people planning, and planning, and getting nothing done. Let them judge, if death comes for me tomorrow, I would not have much regrets.
But one can approach time in different ways:
1) 100 year old self.
In the book Someday is Today, Mathew Dicks talks about having regular conversations with your 100 year old self. Will my 100 year old self like this gossip. Will my 100 year old self regret this fight. Will my 100 years old regret not taking this risk.
This changes the perspective.
I don’t want my 100 year old self to have regrets. I can try and fail, but I should not have regrets that I didn’t. This approach can be expanded into the Cosmic Prespective as well.
The premise is the same but the question to be asked is what will this decision matter in the grand scheme of the universe?
2) Simultaneous Lifetimes:
What if every decision we make is affecting our parallel universe self. Each and every decision we make can take us to different paths.
This is the reason we have to sometimes break out of routines and do crazy stuff for we can never tell what might happen to us.
3) The Eternal Now
This is the most powerful method.
Worry not about the past.
Worry not about the future.
Worry is borrowing from the future and we all know if we borrow interest must be paid.
The Eternal now is to live intensely in the present. Give the day the best short.
Wake up play the game of life hard, and go to bed and start again.
But like many things in life Time too must be approached with flexibility.
When you are with your kids use the eternal now method.
When you wasting time use the 100 year old method
When you are thinking of risks, use the simultaneous lifetime method.
The trick:
Make time your friend. He will reward you with a legacy if you treat him well.