Time and priorities

When you’re adulting or at the age of a man looking for wisdom, you can’t help but think of this line while waiting to shut your eyes at night, “The biggest difference between money and time: You always know how much money you have, but you never know how much time you have.” Quite true. That line is a fact to those who think that they have all the time in the world. But it is wisdom to those who think they have to manage not only time but priorities.

Let me quote Robert Kiyosaki for another time that someone is poor and unsuccessful in life not because of the wrong management of time but of priorities. Anyone can manage time to meet a deadline, to be productive in work, to jam with friends, to live an eternity with significant other, to go to work after another, name it, but only a few can manage the gravity of priorities. Maybe that makes someone successful in his passion but unsuccessful in the other aspect of life or vice-versa.

Imagine, you dream of owning a house, having your own condo or a fancy car with your wealthy look in the driver's seat, for instance. You are motivated to work hard and to make more money to get that dream as quickly as you want it to appear the next day. You consider it your top priority because everybody else, your friends or batchmates in college, has something to show off from the labor and sleepless nights they got. And now you want to be like them. There’s nothing wrong with those dreams but you might try to consider as well to manage your own priorities based on the circumstances you are in. It could be your children’s education, your relationship with your spouse, your parent’s critical condition if they are financially helpless. It could be your psychology, your own philosophy, your relationship with the Divine and yourself, or your health both mind and body.

Our patience can now be measured by just ten seconds lag of our phone. The same thing with our needs. We want instant money, we want to get rich early. However, we lose sight that without a good foundation we can be successful but have no sense of fulfillment.

The comedian Jim Carrey once said, "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer." Our family relationships, our prayer life, and our health will surely help sustain us to run far after our dreams. Without a good relationship with our family, without the life of prayer, and without any preparation for health, the rest of our dreams might remain dreams while lying in our deathbed waiting to be buried at eighty.

Edmer John Caballes

Cebu City