If someone asks me, what is the most precious thing in life, I can say without a doubt that its ‘time’. To me, everything in this world, every action, every person’s behaviour can be explained as a function of time.You hang out with friends to have a good ‘time’, you are careful about choosing a partner because you have to(or want to) spend a life ‘time’ with them, you avoid people when you think they are not worth our ‘time’, you choose a career which either gives you more money or satisfaction for the ‘time’ spent and so on.
I have benefitted a lot from other people’s time and that’s the reason I have learnt to respect people for their time, rather than anything else.
A few months earlier, I had to visit a particular city for a week and I have called up a friend of mine in that city to let him know about my trip. Then my friend could have reacted in one of the two ways: 1) He could have just given me a list of all places I can visit with proper directions and help me with all the information needed, or 2) He could take time out of his schedule to show me some places. My friend chose to do the latter. I really value him for the time he has spent, to show me different places and be a perfect host. I will always be thankful to him for that.
In a totally different situation, when I was working in India, I had a mentor in the US. It was a lot of time investment from him, and he had no immediate benefit in doing it. It was important for me that I make the best use of his time, though I don’t really know if I always did. I learnt a lot from those mentoring sessions with him and I can’t thank him enough. I always owe the success in my career to him.
I moved to the US about an year ago, and I still don’t own a car. I wouldnt have been able to manage without it so far, if not for all my friends and colleagues here, who have taken the time, to help me in different ways, by giving me rides and involving me in their plans (for dinner, movies) etc. Though I never expressed my thankfulness to them for their time, I know how much these small things mean to me.
All these experiences, not only made me realize the importance of one’s time, but also helped me change my perspective on different things. Just to quote an instance: One of my friends, at a certain point in his life, didnt have a job, yet worked for NGOs in return for nothing. He used to spend a lot of time on them. I always thought that he was not being practical in life, but now if I look back, I think it takes a lot of guts to spend time on others, when you haven’t had things figured out in life for yourself. I respect him now, for whatever he has done at that point.
i feel time is ‘uncontrollable’ and that is its value. when we align our individual times for a more productive collective outcome it is eventful. every behavior is indeed function of time and context but unfortunately one can only decide its quality in retrospect.
does it sound irrelevant? give it some time