Spending Time

It wasn't until a few moments ago that I really thought about the phrase "Spending time." And now that I have, it is one of the most hauntingly beautiful phrases to me. Spending time.

For starters let's look at the definition of "spending": to pay out, disburse, expend, or to dispose of. So that means that "spending time" literally translates to disposing of time, meaning that every second or minute or hour of time that we "spend" doing anything means that we are disposing it in exchange for that activity we spent it on. I have no idea if this is making sense to anybody besides myself, but screw it, I'm going to continue.

With everything that we do we are making a conscious decision to forever give away that time in agreement to do whatever that thing is. So if I spend an hour hanging out with friends, an hour working out, and an hour on Facebook, that means that I have agreed to forever get rid of those three hours of my life to do each one of these actives. These are hours that I will never get back, they are permanently disposed of and what I received were those hours of hanging out, working out, and sitting on Facebook. Now, I'm sure that when we look at these three activities we can easily rank them in an order of importance to us. For me, that ranking would go 1. Hanging with friends 2. Working out 3. Facebook. Yet, even though I can easily rank them in importance, I still disposed the exact same amount of time on these activities. Each one I spent an entire hour of my life doing.

Now, let's put this into terms of spending money, something that we are all experienced with. Let's say I have the opportunity to buy my favorite meal from a fancy restaurant, a McDouble from McDonald's, or a bag of top ramen. Clearly we would expect that these would all costs very different prices, but what if they didn't? What if they all cost 20 dollars, would you be willing to spend the same amount of money on all three of these foods? Probably not. I would guess that we would all go with our favorite meal from our favorite restaurant, and if you wouldn't then I hate you as a person because you are ruining my metaphor!!!!!!

My real question, and revelation as I am writing this, is why would we be so frugal with our money, yet not be frugal with our time? Money is something that we can get back, we can gain back. Time is not. Once you spend it, it's gone. Time does not grow on trees. 

So make sure that when you are spending time, you are spending it the way that means the most to you. Make sure you are spending it with the people that mean the most to you. Make sure you spend your time making memories that you will cherish forever. Make sure you are spending your time wisely, because once it is gone it is gone forever.

"If we ever go broke, then time is all we got." - J Cole.