Today's
Meditation:
I
believe that I have a pretty good relationship with
time. I don't worry about it too much, and I don't
regret a lot of wasted time from my past--even though I
did waste a lot of it, I learned from that, too. I
don't wish time would slow down, and I never hope that it
will speed up. I'm fine allowing it to be what it
is, and it keeps on keeping on without a single bit of
help from me.
I
think that part of the reason that time and I get along well
together is because I don't want to change it. I don't
think it should do anything different--I accept it for what
it is, and I do everything I can to make the most of it,
without cramming it full of activities that never allow me
to rest or reflect. My relationship with time is a
result of decisions I make on how to spend it, and even
though I keep myself busy, I often make the decision not to
take on other responsibilities because I know that then,
time would become my enemy if it became a taskmaster to me
rather than a companion.
Our
relationship also depends on how I use my time. It's a
lot like money that way--the amount of money we have means
little; how we spend it means much, much more. If I
spend most of my time doing things that aren't productive
and that don't help other human beings, then guess
what? The value of my time goes down. If I spend
my time focused only on myself and my desires, or parked in
front of the television passively experiencing life as TV
shows present it, then I'm spending my time not learning and
not doing. While I often rest and relax, I also do my
best to spend as much of my time as I can learning new
things so that I can pass them on to others, or doing things
that have a direct positive effect on other people.
Some
of us are afraid of wasting our time, so we over-commit and
we use time ineffectively because we're always so tired that
we're never as good at what we do as we could be.
Others of us never think about how we spend our time at all,
and we tend to just wander through life from experience to
experience, without ever really challenging ourselves to
make the most of the time we have. Balance, of course,
is the key, but awareness of the need for balance is the
starting point.
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