Time
Yo. Yo. Yo. Hey, what's happening? How you doing? What's going on? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I am your host, The Wanz coming to you on another fabulous Wednesday that coincidentally is not like last Wednesday, and I am pretty sure will not be anything like next Wednesday. So what's new? What's, what's happening in your world, hmm? Are you good?
I am here as well as you are here we are sharing something special. What is that special you say? I say that the special thing that we are sharing at this very moment is time. Time. We have time right now to share and we are sharing the time right now. Now, I may not be there physically with you and we may not be in proximity of each other right now, but we're still experiencing this moment of our lives together. Hence, we're sharing time.
They say that time waits for no one. They also say if you have the time, some might say time is fleeting. Others might say, I wish I had more time. I say, time is the most precious thing any of us have for two reasons, one, you can't replace it. You can't go back and replace what happened 30 seconds ago or 10 minutes ago, or a week ago, or five years ago. Once something has happened, that's it. It's a print. It's happened. The second thing about time that makes it the most valuable thing any of us have is because nobody, nobody knows how much they have. You can't replace it, and nobody knows how much they have, which simply on economic terms, makes time the most valuable asset any of us have.
How do you spend your time? Well, that's up to you. I'm not here to tell you how to spend your time, that's not what this is about. What this is about is spurred on by where I just got back from. I just got back from having dinner with three really, really good friends, and we have not had time to spend together like we just did. We went to a restaurant that we were all familiar with and we sat and shared a meal and had conversation for about 90 minutes. That may not sound revolutionary or evolutionary or earth shattering or anything like that. It's a pretty simple thing. Some people got together and had dinner conversation caught up and then parted. But now removed from that time that was spent, I wonder how many more experiences I'll have like that? Will I be able to spend that kind of time with other people? Will they be around to spend time with me? I don't know. What I do know is that I'm extremely grateful. I'm extremely grateful for the people in my life. I'm extremely grateful for the time that I've spent with people in my life.
Every person that I've ever met has contributed to my existence. You ever stop and think about some of the people that you've met in your life? I don't mean just your significant other or the boyfriend of your daughter, girlfriend of your son, or vice versa or whatever, I mean that person that you used to talk with on the bus, the lady who used to live across the street after her husband died, that cousin that you remember from family reunion about 20 years back. Or maybe it's that aunt who lives around the corner who has always come over to babysit you when your mom and dad wanted to go out. There are people in your life, I can swear on a stack of Bibles you have taken for granted. Not on purpose, mind you, but I don't think that you may have given them the attention and appreciation they deserve. I'm not saying that to be accusatory, I'm just pointing out a fact.
Life is a busy thing for everybody. Yours is no different from mine and mine, WOO!! These days, my life is mayhem as I really, really have no idea from one hour to the next what I'm going to be doing, what I should be doing, what I could be doing, or what I missed doing. It's really hard to keep track of time 'cause I'm busy spending my time. I have a friend who says, life is what happens while we're busy making decisions. Now let's focus on that for a second. Some decisions are extremely easy, what shoes are you gonna wear? Are you gonna have a second cup of coffee? How about a third? Are you really gonna go see that movie even though you know you're not gonna like it? And what about that series on Netflix that your bestie says is the best thing ever, and 10 minutes into it, you're like, oh, this is booty!! I digress.
What do you do with your time? How do you spend it? Do you plan? Are you a list person? I was trying to be a list person, but then I would forget to put stuff on the list, or I would put stuff on the list and then never go back to it. Or if I went back to it, I would reprioritize whatever was on the list and end up doing something completely different. What usually happens is I just forget about the whole thing, so it's hit or miss whether I'm gonna remember to feed the cat, take out the garbage. Those things actually have reminders, so they are the things that don't get forgotten. But the things that do get forgotten are, did you call that person back who left you a message last week asking how you were, they just wanted to check up on you. Did you remember to thank those friends who left birthday greetings on your socials? What about that person at the office that you work with or the place where you work, who just happened to have another cup of coffee when they showed up and it was coincidentally exactly the coffee that you order, hmm? All these things take time. All these things make up the fabric of our lives and the time we spend living. The question that I poses to you is how do you decide how to spend your time? There are list people, as I said, there are also people who just fly by the seat of their pants and seem to have no guidance at all. There are people who are to the second planners. They must know what's going to happen before it happens, or at least have a good idea what's gonna happen and here are people who think they know what's going to happen, but then are sometimes pleasantly, sometimes unpleasantly surprised at what actually happens. Did they waste their time? Did they waste their time like the is other people wasted their time? I don't know.
I was watching Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring. I was reminded near the end of one of my favorite phrases that Gandalf says as he's talking to Frodo and Frodo wishes that he had more time. And Gandalf says something like, “It's not how much time we have, it's what we decide to do with the time that we've been given.”
“It's not how much time we have. It's what we decide to do with the time that we've been given.” That's a very profound statement, and everybody has that power to decide what they're going to do with the time they have been given. How valuable is your time? How do you decide to spend your time? It's a fair question. Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever considered other ways of spending your time other than the way that you've spent your time? Are you spending it constructively or destructively? Are you empowering others or ‘de-powering’ yourself (one word)? It's mind boggling how little we think about how we are spending our time. And the ironic thing is we don't think about how we're spending our time. We just think of ways to spend our time. There's work to go to, there's meals to prepare. There are family and friends to visit. There are vacation destinations. There's restaurants and plays and concerts, and God knows what else, all of which we decide whatever day it is, do those things that are desirable for us to do or spend the time on the responsibilities that we have or. Waste time thinking about what we could be doing, but are choosing not to, or fill in the blank. For everyone, it's different, but consider this, as I said before, the most valuable thing any of us have is time because we can't replace it. No one knows how much they have. Every day when I wake up, I take inventory. All five senses work. After that, I remind myself that I only have an opportunity to live. I don't know what the day is going to bring, but I have an opportunity, I’ve got a shot!
If you're listening to this right now, you are in the midst of taking your shot at living right now. So what were you doing before you started listening? What are you gonna do after? Do you know? Have you decided how you're gonna spend your time? Are you gonna spend it on someone with someone maybe? Are you gonna keep it to yourself and be constructive in that endeavor, or are you going to be destructive in whatever endeavor you choose? I challenge you to simply be aware. My pops used to tell me all the time, “There are a lot of things in this world I can do without. Information is not one of them.”
So how much information are you giving to you so that you can better spend your time? Do you get these news flashes and updates from other people, or are you just kind of an independent journalist of your own life and taking stock of what you're doing and what you didn't do? Maybe you're referring to a list. I don't know. Everybody does it different.
The point is, since you only have so much time and you don't know how much, so much is, how do you prioritize what's next? I don't know. I have no answer to that question. It's one of the things that humans have in common. Human beings are the only species on the planet who really, really obsess over time. It's a construct. It's a cage that we give ourselves. We measure time so that we can better decide when and what to do, and that's cool, until you start considering how much time you have. Do you have a little or a lot? You don't know? I don't know. No one knows. How does that affect your decision-making process? How does that help you prioritize or deprioritize things that you want or need to do? I don't have an answer for those questions. What I do have is an observation.
Think about this for a minute. As long as you can remember, you have been in your head and have been learning how to make decisions. You have been practicing, you have made decisions that have been good, bad, and everywhere in between the results, that is, the results of your decisions, the consequences. Every single decision that you've ever made has taken time. Can you go back and look at a certain period of your life and figure out why you made the decision that you made? Maybe you remember that time that you got busted and you went to jail, and you say, “Ah, if I only had not done X, Y, or Z, or if I hadn't gotten caught, or if I hadn't told the lie. Or if I hadn't, fill in the blank. So what about now? How does that affect your ‘future’ time decisions? You don't think it does? Oh, I beg to differ.
We are the sum of every single one of our experiences at any given time. So way back when you couldn't even remember when you were one and a half. I have no recollection of that first time that you ever had strained peas or the first time you tasted a banana, or when your mom found out you were allergic to peanuts, but you probably do remember that one time in school when that person hurt your feelings by not really accepting the way that you looked or the way that you talked or the way that you walked. You definitely remember when you got fired from that job and you remember when you got a new job, bought a car, your first apartment living alone, when that person that you really had the huge crush on said, yeah, let's go out and get a drink. All these things take time. So I guess in a nutshell, time isn't only the most valuable thing we have because you can't replace it and nobody knows how much they have. It also is the best reference to help you make present decisions because you have a running record of your past decisions.
I'll leave you with this. I took it upon myself some time ago to watch the first 10 minutes of a local newscast. If I don't see myself or anyone that I know, it's been a good day. Why do I say that? Simply because the most serious news is always in the first 10 to 12 minutes of any news broadcast anywhere in the world. Don't believe me? Watch the news and then check your feelings at that first commercial break. Are you relieved? Happy? Disappointed maybe? Who knows? Use your time wisely. Use it in support of improving who you are. Learn not only from mistakes you've made, but, mistakes others have made. Don't you remember parents used to say, “If Billy jumps off a bridge, are you gonna jump off too?”, Billy's not here, but you are.
Thank you for spending your time with me for a little while. Now. Go forth and perpetuate goodness, loveliness, patience, tolerance, acceptance, and of course, blessings. Thanks for being here. I'll talk to you next week.
Peace.