I Wish I Did Or I Wish I Didn't?

Lately, one has been appreciating the value of time. With each passing day, my understanding of time keeps getting deeper. Obviously, I would not have studied time if I were Albert Einstein. However, because I have nothing but time, I get to see time at a more intimate level.

One key lesson that stands out, that Albert Einstein discovered, time is relative. When one is mindful of time, time seems slow. When one is not mindful of time, time seems to speed by quickly. This lesson gave me an answer to the riddle about my twenties that had plagued my mind.

When I was 19, I had many dreams. One of the dreams was to become a millionaire by 21. The other was to be a South African car manufacturer by age 30. I’m not going to lie, those dreams at the time felt very real. When I was 19, those dreams felt very real to me that I would achieve them.

But unfortunately, they did not come to fruition. When I was 21 years old, instead of becoming a millionaire, I got to experience my first pain from love. When I turned 30 years old, I was nothing but a shell of the shadow of my former self. My dreams, especially financial dreams, did not come to reality.

I sat and asked myself how it is that the dreams I had for myself never came true. For the longest time, I blamed external factors. I blamed my family for being too traditional to colour outside the lines. I blamed my friends for always looking to have fun instead of building financial wealth. I blamed everything and everyone outside of myself.

But obviously, one grows up and one gets to appreciate free will. That, yes, my family may be traditional, more accurately conservative, but I have free will. This is my life that I am living, and if they disagree with my choices, that’s their problem. My friends are always seeking a good time, but they have been doing so since they discovered alcohol. Yes, I am a firm believer in the influence of an environment, but at the end of the day, this is my life.

God is not mocked; you reap what you sow, so this harvest was not sown by my family and friends, but it was sown by me. Now this concept has me stuck. Because if becoming a millionaire was a dream of mine, why haven't I reaped it? Surely I sowed the right seeds. I read every book on financial freedom. When my friends watched illegally downloaded TV dramas and soapies, I would binge-watch motivational videos on YouTube. I can proudly say that I watched the famous “How Bad Do You Want To Succeed” video by E.T. when it had fewer than a thousand views. What was I possibly doing wrong?

Yes, there were reasons that I discovered that obstructed my success. But the one I recently discovered, the one that ties everything together, is that Einstein was right when he said that time is relative.

Time is slow if you are mindful of it. If right now you sit to meditate, or choose to be alone with your thoughts in a relaxed walk or by sitting outside, each passing second feels like an eternity. One could sit and feel like they were sitting for hours on end, only to realise that they were sitting for a few minutes. Because at the moment, we are mindful of time.

It’s like sitting in a quiet room that has a clock. If you are mindful, you will hear each passing second. You’ll hear each tick of the clock winding down. It reminded me of how when I was younger. My mother had set a time that I could only visit my friends from 2:30 pm until 5:30 pm. If I had finished my chores earlier, waiting for 2:30 pm would feel like torture. Watching the clock, I’d wish the arms would race to 2:30 pm.

You see, in the same light, when I was 19 years old, I was mindful of the time I had. Each waking day, I dedicated it to my success. Everything I did when I was 19, I believed that it was to make me a millionaire. And I was extremely mindful of this. So much so that I failed my engineering studies. Because at the time, my focus was on making money.

But obviously, I was not ready for such a failure. All of a sudden, the betrayal by my girlfriend at the time derailed me. In fact, there are so many incidents that occurred during that time that gave me a rude awakening. It was a violent removal of the scales I had over my eyes. Youthful naivety, my friend once called it. And truthfully, those experiences forced me to restart.

And restart I did. Yes, I still had the belief. But what was different, I kinda did not have the energy. The same relentless drive to succeed, no matter the cost, slowly began to fade away. From going 3 to 4 nights with no to little sleep, if I went a day without rest, I could feel the fatigue instantly. From fearlessly knocking on doors, presenting people with a “once-in-a-lifetime idea”, I walked timidly within my lane. And moving from a city back home, a rural town, literally was the slow poison that sapped my dreams.

What was happening as well, I was slowly not becoming mindful of time anymore. I lived with the currents of life. I moved with life. I took the advice of those whom I believed knew better and forgot about my free will. I suddenly found myself employed, something that when I was 19, I had vowed I’d never be. Then suddenly I found myself in debt to finance a starter pack car when I vowed my first car would be a BMW. I suddenly found myself 30 years of age with no car manufacturing plant of my own, but instead, being an adult with dead dreams.

Now, I don’t say that negatively. That’s merely the reality of my life. And when my mind erupted with frustrations of being employed, I came back home to find myself once again. And in finding myself, the key lesson I discovered is that of time being relative.

It’s interesting that if you have a discussion with a really successful person, even though they may be extremely busy, they are mindful of their time. They have their time planned as if it were their finances. They are frugal with their time, and they are deliberate as to how they spend their time. And in most cases, they actually have more free time than most people.

Most people, on the other hand, are not mindful of their time. Most of us end up employed. And indeed, in these tough times, that is a blessing to many. But to us, who want to achieve our dreams, employment is a curse. Employment steals your time. And when that happens, it becomes impossible for you to be mindful of your time.

Hence, when you talk with an employed person or an employee mindset person, they are very comfortable with not owning their time. If they see you fail at your dreams, their comments are usually along the lines of, “that’s life” or something like that. Because they do not own their time, in turn, they do not own their life. So, success or failure to them is merely a gamble of life.

They are the people who, when in tough times, pray for a miracle, forgetting the scripture that says God is not mocked, you reap what you sow and that faith without works is dead. They are the people who’ll call their car a blessing from God, yet wonder where He is when they miss two months' instalments and the car is repossessed. Individuals who are not mindful of time, to them, life is a gamble, a game of fate orchestrated by the Heavens. They simply do not control their time; therefore, they do not control their life.

And that’s exactly what happened to me. The core belief of becoming a millionaire has never changed. But what will happen is that the energy to become successful would be driven into my job. I would go the extra mile, sacrifice sleep for organisations that only knew me by number. And so, I no longer lived my life, but instead, I lived my life according to the needs and demands of employment.

And because I’m from a middle-class society, almost everyone is employed, and this is the life they live. They saw nothing wrong with it. Instead, they called it God’s blessing, and I should appreciate it. And foolishly, I believed this. All of a sudden, I am 30 year 30-year-old man who has not achieved the financial freedom he believed he would be enjoying at this age.

Primarily because I stopped being mindful of my time. I stopped paying attention to how I spend my time. And now, as one is teaching himself once more to be mindful of time, I can see how I am wasting my time, ergo my life.

Time is relative. Therefore, it is always a good idea to take into account how you spend it. Do you want to be the 70-year-old who had no idea how quickly they became old, looks back on their life with regret? Regret having wasted your life thinking you’ll enjoy it at an age that your physically cannot? Or do you want to be the 70-year-old who looks back at their life with a sense of fulfilment, knowing they enjoyed every moment of their life, having lived each moment to the fullest?

Which regret do you wish to live with? The regret of having lived or the regret of haven't lived? That’s for you to decide.