Is there anything more valuable than time in the world? It is possible to create or obtain something valuable without investing effort, money, or other resources, but nothing happens instantly. Even on the fertile soils of the south, where the earth gives birth to itself and even peasant labor is not hard labor, you cannot force the fruits to grow faster. But time is much more than a useful resource.
Our very life is made up of it. However, paradoxically, there are few things we treat with such disdain, sometimes deadly disdain, as we do with time. Killing time — a very common activity of the last hundred years — is nothing more than a form of slow suicide, cutting off pieces from one’s own life. And humanity has come up with many ways and tools for this murder — from board (more or less gambling) games to television series. They are like fire and flowing water, which, as you know, you can look at endlessly: the picture changes all the time, but nothing happens.
One of us is constantly short on time, and usually the older we get, the more. Others, on the contrary, all their lives toil about what to do with it. But after all, it does not happen that time simply exists or does not exist. It is always on something, but on something it is not. The presence (or absence) of time correlates with the occupation for which we need it, with the meaning on which we want to spend part of our lives.
We should learn to feel and appreciate the only thing that, in essence, our very life consists of.
And someone has a lot of such meanings and does not have enough time, while someone simply does not have them and there is nowhere to put the time. Unfortunately, it cannot be transferred or sold to those who need it more… Time is not inside us, but outside of us. It does not pass, we pass, as was also said, it seems, in the Talmud. But man differs from all other living beings in that he lives in time. For him, there is not only the present, what is here and now, plus or minus a short memory of the past and an even shorter ability to anticipate upcoming events.
A person connects his past into a single structure — and not only memories (starting from early childhood), but also the historical past, what was before his birth, the present and the future, again including even what will happen after his death. (Some, of course, don’t care—there’s even a flood after us, as one of the selfish French monarchs said.) Out of time are those who live one day, for whom today does not correlate with yesterday, and tomorrow is not rooted in today. For them, actions are devoid of consequences and mistakes do not teach anything. Stepping on a familiar rake is a symptom of life outside of time.
We are gradually learning to appreciate, protect, protect and restore the space around us — ecology is now in the price. Let us learn to feel and appreciate the time around us. There will be no other.