Trading time for a tomorrow that may never come
Time is precious, more often than not we fail to realize it. We act as if time is the cheapest commodity in life. For what? What do we trade it with? and why?
In my 5-square meter room in a lodge disguised as a hotel, tucked away from civilization, far away from family and friends, I am celebrating every day as an achievement. Every day I dedicate towards work gets offset by money which are digits that gets added to my bank account. Most of the time I don’t get to see or feel those digits.
The money remains virtual, which gets transferred out in the same digital form from my account to the account of vendors who trade ‘things’ and ‘experiences’. And those ‘things’ and ‘experiences’ are getting more and more artificial by day. If not a vendor, money gets transferred to someone’s account to satisfy their needs, except that it comes at the cost of my time, my today. Needs are not basic anymore, the line between needs and wants have disappeared and it’s difficult to identify between the two, it has become so confusing.
So as the digit grows at my account, which as mentioned remains virtual most of the time, I keep losing something which I value least nowadays – ‘Time’. I trade time for everything cheap. I convince my mind that it is the most expendable thing I have, and I have it in unlimited supply. I guess I am waiting for my turn to realize otherwise. Until then I will continue to ignore it and focus on the heights I need to reach, and the digits I need to cover.
World around me has its own way to convince me that time doesn’t matter. And if it cannot convince me to trade time for the luxury that comes with money, then it does it through fear. Nowadays everywhere I look around, all I see is fear. The fear of being jobless, the fear of losing the social status, the fear of kids not being able to go to the best schools, fear of being not able to afford the ‘things’ I may need, and fear of all the worst things imaginable that can happen.
Time seems to be the cheapest thing I have in hand to trade with the golden pass, that will hedge against all those fears. I am convinced by all the social networks, the media and everything else around me that I should keep walking on the treadmill of life. Not to look around or pause to enjoy what I have got, or I may lose everything.
So, I wake up tired from the previous night, I skip my breakfast to be on time, I indulge myself at what I do so that I forget everything else, I finish late, I commute, I get back to my 5×5 den, I switch on Netflix, I convince myself that I am happy and I have everything, I crash to bed, and…. I repeat…. forever and ever. The repetition has become religious, it doesn’t bore me for I have no time to think about boredom, the repetition has slowly turned into a habit, and the habit is consuming me like a cancer, eating away from my time slow and steady.
Family can wait but digits in my virtual account can’t, “after all I do this for them” that’s one tag line which never gets out of fashion, except that doesn’t get into your 4-year old’s head… Friends can wait, health can wait, simple pleasures can wait, nature can wait, laughter can wait… I am on a race, I need to score as many digits as I can, and once I have them all I will get back to all of these things, until then they can all wait… But when will that day come when I can get back to them? Tomorrow….. because I sacrifice my today for a tomorrow which may never come…
P.S. This is a sarcastic piece on our daily rush to make money at the cost of everything else, it’s not a confession….
Photo credit Photo by Eugene Shelestov from Pexels