When we are fixated on buying tools that promise to enhance life, we expend the finite time we earn onto objects. As objects depreciate and die out waiting for us to use them fully, so does the time we earn in life.
Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now - that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you'll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order. And that therefore you had better stop postponing the 'real meaning' of your existence into the future, and throw yourself into life now. -- Oliver Burkeman
Time is transactory. Time spent in our professions is exchanged for money and money, beyond the basic safeguards (health, security, etc.), can provide only two things:
- it can change the quality of time one spends
- it can give more time for a person to live aspects of life other than profession.
Time spent in professions, thus becomes, an investment to access more free time or improve one's quality of time in life.
Our obsession of earning quality time in the future blinds us from seeing that the time we are spending right now is what we had earned (and yearned) yesterday.
It is of very little use to us to be able to control and plan the future unless we are capable, at the same time of living totally in the present - Alan Watts
The only two things that can be bought with our time i.e. improving our quality of time in this life or adding more free time to our life, both are often squandered by our excessive focus on material belongings.
Fifteen days of what could have been lifechanging experiences - that you sacrificed by working for money - might only amount to a TV that is adorning your room, gaping at you with its large black mouth, as you whittle away at spreadsheets.
The seldomly used TV, the car that leaves your garage once a month, the obligatory expenditure you made to satisfy someone, are not signs of pride or duty but are signs of not living.
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