Time: God's Greatest Gift To Mankind.

I’ve been unemployed for roughly a year now. There have been many challenges and obstacles that one faced during this period. But every challenge and obstacle that one faced, they carried with them lessons to be learned. Without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest lesson is the appreciation of time.

I use the term appreciation of time deliberately. I think we are all aware of the ever-ending race of time. Slowly, time ticks away, and every human is aware that their time will come to an end. Even a child, when they look at a dead insect, will comprehend that the insect’s time on Earth is over.

And you know, children, when you tell them that they have 5 minutes to do something, they know that that’s not a lot of time. But if you tell them that they have 30 minutes to do something, they know that’s a lot of time to do something.

To the adult brain, this may seem somewhat foolish. Because our adult brain has grown accustomed to engaging in activities that span longer than 30 minutes. It could be the 45-minute to 90-minute classes we attended in university. It could be the 1-hour to 3-hour training and workshops we attend at work. Or it could be the Friday-to-Monday parties we attended in our adolescence.

And herein is the lesson that I learnt that made me appreciate time. Yes, one could be in that 1-hour Teams meeting and dreading every minute of it. It might feel like every minute feels like an entire hour within that single 60 seconds. However, no matter how dreading that single minute may be, because there is something that is filling that minute, the true appreciation of that minute will not be felt.

It is when I left work that I learnt this. Because now, all I have is this minute. Nothing is filling this minute. No matter how boring, tedious or labour-intensive the task may be. All I have is this minute.

In this minute, I choose what to do with it. I can scroll on TikTok with this minute. I can put these minutes together and watch a video on YouTube. My mind had been programmed that each minute that goes by must be filled with something.

This we can see with the ineffective manager who, even on a slow day, will find something to task to his employees. This we can sometimes see with our parents, who are accustomed to working every minute of their day. If they see you sitting, doing nothing, they will either be worried and think that maybe you are in the blues, or they’ll think you are lazy and need to get a job.

And yes, one does not rule out these possibilities that parents might have towards you if they see you doing nothing. Because of their love, maybe they can see something is eating you in the inside, and a good walk or spending time with friends might help. Or, indeed, you are being lazy and a bit of hard love with wake you up from your slumber.

These misuses of time are possible in the context of doing nothing. But the doing nothing I'm referring to is the nothing of nothing. It is the Zazen nothing. It is the sitting and being mindful of self nothing. It is the letting the mind create, process and diminish thoughts on its own nothing.

In this nothingness is where I learnt to appreciate time. It is where I learnt that the child who 30 minutes seems like eternity to him is not far from the truth of it. Because when you sit and do nothing, after 10 minutes or so, you start feeling uncomfortable.

For instance, I am a guy with a flat bum. So after 10 minutes of just sitting, I feel the lack of extra cushion. The mind can become reckless with overwhelming thoughts. That one long-forgotten memory of childhood finds its way to your mind. That memory that maybe caused great embarrassment or continues to harbour great emotional pain. But you sit and fight through the memory. Only to realise that only 10 minutes have passed.

Practising Zazen again really brought home this lesson to me. At the end of the day, time is the currency we use to measure our lives. And to a large degree, every human understands this. For instance, there are roughly 250 working days in a year. Out of those 250 working days, the government forces organisations to give their employees 21 leave days.

Most adults in this case will already plan their leave days accordingly. They’ll look for public holidays and fit in a day or two to make a long weekend or plan their days for a 2-week vacation. This shows an understanding of time by the adult. But not the appreciation of it.

The appreciation of time will make the adult understand that they are not living their life according to their time, but according to that of the company. And if we are honest with ourselves, most organisations have set up leave systems in such a way that it is nearly impossible to fully enjoy the whole 21-day leave right. Others, on the other hand, do not make it so impossible, but will continue to assign tasks to you while on leave. They simply take it as working from home (or vacation).

I have seen one of my high-end superiors lose a father, but because of her commitment to the work, she did not take a single day off. Everyone marvelled at her commitment and gave her praise. I called it nonsense. Because this place we call work has robbed so much of her time that she was, without a shadow of doubt, now a slave to her workplace.

Someone who is a slave to the workplace is a person who can be commanded to do anything, and that person will oblige. Someone who’s not a slave to the workplace is one who knows that at the end of the day, it’s their time and not the company’s. The sad thing, however, these individuals never last at any workplace. Because the workplace will begin to oust them. They will be called in and asked to be more of a “team player” or asked to be more “involved” or any of the thousands of corporate jargon that they use to make a person feel they are not part of the community- the community being the workplace.

But such a person I personally commend because this person understands how important their time is. Yes, some have patience. Some people will weather out the turbulent, slave like treatment of entry-level jobs. Then they progress into mid or higher-level jobs, and at this level, they have more freedom with their time. Such people are the people who have a real and honest love for their profession. So these people are the lucky ones who have found love in their work.

Unfortunately, not everyone will experience the joy of finding love in their work. Unfortunately, not everyone will take that leap of faith to leave the workplace in the name of cherishing their time. For some of us, the workplace was stealing our time, so that leap of faith made perfect sense.

But that’s the beginning of it all. Because when I arrived home, my mind was still wired for the workplace. I had achieved the first phase of understanding my time, but I was not yet appreciating my time. Immediately, I wanted to do something that would fill this time. I opened a cleaning business and tried various things in the name of filling this time.

Because at a fundamental level, for the past 5 to 6 years of my young adult life, I was employed, and so, every minute of my life was filled with something. So when I left the workplace, I wanted to carry on with the same tradition. Also, because I had been to various cities, my mind was operating at a faster rate than the rate of being home in a rural town.

In the city, everything is at your fingertips. One needs only search for it on the internet and best believe it will be delivered on the same day, latest, maybe two days. Nothing wrong with this convenience, especially if you are introverted like me. You see, this convenience creates a fantastic illusion that we mere humans can fast-track time.

And this was made clear when I got back home. Because it is a rural area, almost everything I want is not available in town. And so, I need to order it. And in ordering it, it will take 3 to 5 working days to arrive. Sometimes longer. This destroyed the illusion that the convenience in the city had created. It made one remember that you actually have to wait for things, and not everything will arrive instantly when you need it.

In this waiting, there is nothing. A friend of mine wanted to start selling clothes online. Coincidentally, I was thinking the same. What’s interesting about this is that if I were still in the city, the same day the idea got to mind would have been the same day I would have found a supplier. Not here at home. No, I had to rely on internet pictures and hope I won’t be scammed. And then after that, I had to wait for a week before the sample arrived.

So that week, I could do nothing but wait. And this waiting is what made a person appreciate time. Because as one waits, you are forced to be alone with your thoughts. Life is the interpretation of the mind. The mind only makes sense of these interpretations through thoughts. And these thoughts are what then give meaning to your life.

Thus, processing these thoughts allows you to have a deeper understanding of your own life. And the only way to fully process these thoughts, some coming from your childhood, is to spend time with them.

It is impossible to spend time with these thoughts if your thoughts are about the deadlines and meetings of work. It is impossible to spend time with these thoughts if your thoughts are about the endless trends on TV and on social media. It is easy to lose track of our thoughts, thus losing track of our lives.

Hence, we can find so many old people regretting the lives they lived because, unfortunately for them, they never spent the time to track their thoughts. The only way to track one’s thoughts is to be with your thoughts. By being with your thoughts, the appreciation of time will then make sense.

One thought that visits my mind always is that of being a father. When I was employed, this thought would visit my mind, but I’d push it aside. I’d tell myself that I need to accomplish certain milestones that only my workplace can help with. These milestones, I later realised they were created by the fake promises of employment. More accurately, these milestones were planted by the workplace, in which I thought they were my own.

Leaving the workplace, and when this thought comes to mind now, it makes one realise how much time I wasted chasing illusions created by employment. The time I spent chasing these illusions was caused by allowing these illusions to take hold of my mind. Now that I have better control of my mind and time, this thought is one that carries some sadness with it.

This sadness is because I realised just how much time I wasted to become a father. Time I will never get back, no matter how hard I try. Thus, with this sadness occurring every time I think about becoming a father, there is also a deeper sense of appreciation that time is of the essence. And because I was able to see the depiction of fast-tracked time set by the convenience of the city, there is also understanding that being a father will take time.

But this waiting is not the same as waiting for a meeting to end. It is a waiting of expectation. It is a waiting for getting ready. It is a waiting that harbours some excitement that it will happen soon. It is a waiting that makes one appreciate waiting.

It is a waiting like savouring a delicious spoonful of ice cream. It is not a rushed waiting. Like the blossoming of flowers, it is a natural waiting that promises one life. It is a waiting that makes one realise that the waiting is the process of manifesting thought to reality. Thus, in this process, there is an appreciation of the process itself.

Thus allowing a person to appreciate the time that the process is taking. It is not forced. It is not like the person who wishes to lose weight and believes the process of going to the gym for a month will yield the result. It is instead the patient waiting of witnessing faith work.

And in this witnessing of faith work, therein one learned to appreciate time. That King Solomon knew what he was saying when he said that everything has its time. That when it’s winter, we will not wish for it to be summer.

The workplace, for instance, will begin giving you jackets and fake sun to give the illusion that you are in the summertime already. The fast-tracked convenience of the city will sell you heaters and fake beaches, bringing you an illusion of summer in winter. And in doing so, you lose track of time by losing track of your thoughts. Because your thoughts will be deceived, thinking it is summer when in reality it is winter.

When we allow our minds to be in the winter and appreciate the winter as it is, this will allow us to appreciate what the winter brings to us. Perhaps the feel of cold to the skin, just to help one feel alive, is what the soul needs. By being cognizant and appreciative of the wintertime, this will allow you to feel the cold and fully experience being alive.

This is what I learned to be the true nature of time. Time is definitely not the 24-hour clock we have been programmed to believe it is. Let’s not forget that time, the way that we most understand it, was a system created by industrialists to track the productivity of employees. Herein, the same system was translated into the education system so that employees will believe time is a timetable with various tasks to be completed.

That is definitely not what time is. This brings us back to those milestones I was talking about. Because of this systematic approach we think time is, we approach life the same way.

I want to be a father. But the systematic approach to time, thanks to the workplace and schooling, made me believe I need to fulfil certain milestones first. That I need to upgrade my education, then after get a house, then after get this and then get that and only after this and that I can be a father.

When in truth, that’s not how life works, and that’s not how time works either. We might be able to control how we use our time, but we cannot dictate it. We can never tell time what to do before doing something else. That is for the Lord to decide. Lucky for us, he gave us the intelligence to understand when the season will change. He gave the intelligence to feel the temperatures drop to know when it’s winter.

Having this intelligence then allows us to appreciate the winter. Because we will know the temperatures have dropped, and so, it is wintertime. In this lies the ability to appreciate time for what it is.

Time is the currency we spend on this Earth. A very expensive currency that we can only use once. Let us strive to use it wisely.