Contributed by: Jihad Mahmoud
How overwhelming time is! How perplexing, elusive and sneaky! It passes under your nose, filled with so many memories that you wish to keep still, so many moments that you wish to re-live but no matter what you do, you can’t stop it from passing. It’s almost cruel how it just goes by without a look back, without a logical explanation that could reach our human limited ability to comprehend how it simply leaves with our life packed in its pockets.
Sometimes, it passes so fast that you’re completely unaware and eventually stunned at its speed. In a blink of an eye, you’re not a child anymore, but an adult individual who has to take on the world on their own. All your child memories of yesterday suddenly seem so distant and obscure.
At other times, it becomes so turtle-slow that you can feel every minute of it moving past you, looking at you cynically, sticking its tongue out at you, knowing that it’s just doing what it has to do, and what you can’t stop, “passing”.
But what about you? Are you making the best out of this short span of time that you have? Are you using it wisely? Or are you just letting it slip like sand through your fingers, unconscious of the fact that it can never be rewinded or brought back from its unstoppable one-way journey?
If you’re a big fat time-waster like I am, then your answer will most probably be yes to the second one. You’re letting too much time slip away taking with it so many amazing things that could be happening to you, or that you could make happen if you were just a little time-wiser.
The truth is, time-wasting is never done on purpose. I mean you don’t wake up one morning with the decision to squander your time. You wouldn’t for instance think inside your head: “let’s waste some time today” and go waste it. It never comes out of prior intention; it just happens.
It happens when you put off things that you have to do now for some time later. It happens when you spend an hour on a task that actually takes just 10 minutes, out of your incessant need to perfect and to impress. It happens when you spend half of your days sleeping while other people out there are making the impossible possible. It happens when you indulge in day-dreaming and do nothing out of your dreams in the real world. You imagine being “a writer, a doctor, a singer, or whatever” and it feels so real, so effortless that your thinking about it is enough. You simply settle for the easy satisfying illusion than go for the strenuous, hard-work reality. So, time-wasting just happens and whether you know it or not, and whatever the reasons were, you have to act upon it before it’s too late.
How can you conquer this bad habit! by simply putting goals.
Don’t go through the day without having a to-do list to check at the end of that day. You don’t have to check all the items but at least you’ll be aware of what needs to be done.
The same thing applies to life in general. Do not go through life without having a definite purpose to pursue because this is the ultimate death for any life, to be aimless. Your goals don’t have to be so big, or so unique that they seem out of reach or unachievable. They can be as simple as the things that make you happy: a musical instrument you’ve always yearned to learn how to play, a language you’re really interested in, a certain certificate that’ll move you higher up the career ladder. Following simple achievable goals will lead you in time to a more fulfilled and self-satisfying life that doesn’t offer you much free time to waste.
They say: “Time is money”, but I say: “It’s gold”. Don’t sit around doing nothing, letting your gold rust and lose its worth. Do not procrastinate; stick to the goals you set and be committed. Do your best to accomplish your dreams and make them a reality. Create a life worthy of living, one that you can look back on with pride not regret.
