Time Is A Gift

If we get in touch with these THREE things, our lives will never be the same.

On August 21st, my Uncle wrote me a letter. Included in this letter was a piece of paper with the words “Time Is A Gift” at the top. It’s an excerpt from a 1985 edition of the New York Times. I’ll transcribe it for you here:

“The day you were born, you were given so many hours to live. The measure of your success in life will be what you do with that time. You can work with it, play with it, or throw it away.

If you live to age 70, you have 613,000 hours. At age 40, you’ve spent 350,000 of those hours. At 50, you’ve spent 438,000 hours.

What you’ve spent is gone. You cannot buy, rent, or borrow the time. It’s what you have left that matters.

You invest your time in four general areas: Work, family, play and yourself. The key is to find a balance among all of these.

To get a job you’re happy with, to give and receive love, and to do what pleases you. And, last but not least, to be able to stop and smell the roses.

As you grow older, life seems to go faster. Time, of course, is unchanged. But you’re more aware of how much you have left. When I was 20, I felt invincible. I thought nothing could ever happen to me — and I felt I would never die.

Now I’m in my 60’s, and I realize that there is an end. So I’ve changed my approach to living. I no longer waste time on things because I have to. I choose my friends, my social activities, and my tasks at work more carefully. The trivialities of life do not occupy me anymore. Now I choose how I want to spend that moment. As a result, I like myself much more.

Too many people are unhappy with their jobs. They work only because they need the paycheck. So they squander their most precious possession: their time.

A modest proposal: List all the things you enjoy, all the things you are good at, and everything positive about yourself. Then figure a way to integrate these qualities into your daily regiment…your job, your hobbies, your family life. And don’t tell me you do not have the time.”

So, about that modest proposal… I learned in doing those exercises THREE things I think would eradicate the majority of what we call mental illness in todays world:

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