Skip to main content

Our Most Valuable Resource

I came across this formula the other day; you should try it too: take your age, multiply it by 365, subtract the product from 25,000.  Do you know what that number signifies?  That is approximately how much time you have remaining if you live in North America.  I was shocked to see my number in the 8,900 range.  While 8,900 days is rather abstract (it comes out to 24 years years and some change), it is strange to see your life expectancy spelled out in such a specific number.
     How much time have I wasted?  How much will I continue to waste?  Now, that number was simply a general outline; I could drop dead today--laid low by an aneurysm or killed in a car crash--or I could live to be 96, no one knows, but still...it serves as a good reminder that no one, NO ONE lives forever this side of death.
     I've found myself less enchanted by video and computer games these days, notorious time suckers that they are, and yet I still find plenty of ways to sift out my hours in a less-than-stewardly manner.  Time wasted flipping through TV channels or surfing the web could be much better spent.  Of the seven deadly sins (Pride, Avarice, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger, and Sloth) sloth is in my top three.  Why is this?  I don't know.  It serves me in that I don't speed through life missing details, I can spot hawks on the highway all the time, but I don't tend to be motivated when I should.
     I'm slowly, emphasis on slowly, working to be more, dare I say, productive?  Actually, productivity is not what I need.  What I need to be is a better steward of my time.  Productivity is for an office, time stewardship is for a life.  "Wasting" time with a friend, family member, or God is not productive, but it is necessary.  "Teach us to number our days, LORD."
     So, how much time do you have left and what will you do with it?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.                                                                                                 --Hilaire Belloc                                                                                                The Servile State

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.

Independent Women?

      During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust .  The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI.  The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said.  The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character.  He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture.  He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing."  This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point.     I would counter with "How far we've fallen."  To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons