TIME

Being the Second of 103 Good Things



When I set out to blog about 103 Good Things in my life Time was certainly not one of the ideas I had. And yet without it, all the other Good Things are as naught.

Money is often maligned by being described as the root of all evil. The original quote is from the Bible and reads “For the love of money is the root of all evil:”. Similarly Time is also frequently maligned as being the cause of many of our problems but nearly always it is the lack of time or the mismanagement of time that is the evil.

I think that nowadays we tend to try too hard to get £1 and sixpenceworth of spending out of our £1. Similarly we try too hard to get an hour and five minutes worth of things done in every hour. We never seem to have enough time.

Having been on holiday for three months I was amazed at how quickly the days went despite not having to do a lot of the things I am obliged to do at home. Now I’m back in the whirl of ‘real’ life I am equally amazed at how many jobs there are to do and, apparently, how little time. And yet, in the vast majority of cases the deadlines are of my own making.

Now that the hedge has been cut back from the public pavement it makes no difference to anyone else at what speed I get the garden back in order. Gardening is supposed to be fun and not a chore. So I shall do the weeding and the cutting back at my own pace. Each little job will be treated as the triumph that it is rather than as only being a small percentage of the whole.

Most of the paperwork that requires my attention has managed three months without it. So I don’t need to sort it today. Tomorrow will do, or the next day....

Housework is a never-ending cycle and living with others means that however much I do there will always be more to do when I wake up the next morning. So why rush it?

I have yet to blog my Hebridean adventures from 23rd June onwards on my Hebridean blog. There’s no need to try to do them all in one go. I shall do them bit by bit and anyone who follows that blog can continue to enjoy them for some time to come.

And all the other things on my lists – they too can wait.

Time, like fire, telephones and computers can be a good friend but a bad master. I shall endeavour in future to use what time I have left to good effect and not spend it worrying about things not done.

We may debate at length what happens when you finally run out of time. Suffice it to say that whatever religion or philosophy you espouse you can be assured your physical body is not going to carry on doing things. So, treated properly, time is definitely a Good Thing.