Time.
The trouble is, you think you have time.
– Buddha –
How often do we stop and think about time? About the age we currently have and its equivalence with hours, minutes and seconds, or even smaller ways of measuring it, and how we have spent it, what have we done with it. Have we already achieved the things one day we said we would? Did the goals we once set live in invisible timeframes and we have saved them in boxes buried in the unknown future holds? Have we made the most out of it, enjoying being with friends and loved ones, or even ourselves?
I've always felt this intense and deep fear when I think about that one day I will eventually die. Even though I'm just getting to the middle of my life –if we agree on an average of 80 to 85 years– when that thought came to mind, I always tried to do something else to be able to shake it off and get it out of my head. But since my Dad recently passed away, I've found myself not thinking about death anymore, instead and perhaps unconsciously, I shifted that thought and started thinking about it an opposite way. Like for example which things I haven't done. Which things I've been avoiding and that have prevented myself from moving forward and realize my dreams, commit and achieve my goals, being fully present and happy. And today something happened that allowed me to think about it deeper than never.
It was a nice Tuesday day around 15:00 in the afternoon. I had just finished taking a shower because minutes ago I have been doing exercise, like most days around the middle of the day, give or take, and was doing my post-workout routine when suddenly a loud sound was heard: the lights in the country, for most regions, had shut down entirely. Turned out that the electric system on the north side of the country had a malfunction and everything was off, all the way down to the south side, which I didn’t knew yet. The first words that came out of my mouth were “fuck”, followed by “I think I’ll go to a Starbucks and work from there”. I needed to go back to work, because luckily and gratefully I’m able to do it remotely, but still, it was time to return.
So I finished putting my clothes on, grabbed the backpack with my laptop and headphones, and on my way I was. The backup generator from the building was on and the main things were working. I live in the 8th floor and didn’t want to go down to the -1 floor to get to my car by taking the stairs –Don't blame, I had just been working out–. And I also wanted to get to the coffee shop as soon as possible, in order to keep on working. So I took the elevator, got in the car, exited the building and got the Starbucks I usually go for some days during the week. For good or bad luck –I’ll explain later why it can be one or the other– everything was completely off. The offices near were letting workers go to their homes, the people in the restaurant that’s next were leaving it, and one of the people at the coffee told me that it was a massive shutdown, almost country-wide. I could not believe it, but I thought “ok, this should come back shortly”, so I stayed there for a while, lit up a cigarette, tried to see on my phone what was going on and the internet was basically shit. I was just able to read the descriptions of some Instagram posts that explained a bit the situation. So I decided to go back home.
I got to the apartment and hoped that my internet connection could be a bit better there, but no. I wasn’t even able to call my mother to know if she was fine, where she was when this happened, nothing. I wanted to see the match of my favorite football team, Chelsea, but I wasn’t able to connect the App. The only thing I was able to do for a couple of minutes was letting the company know that I could not come back and work. Which they already knew, since I have other coworkers that are from and live in Chile as well.
Since I could not do anything tech-related and I wasn’t able to work, I realized that I had full and free time for myself. So I did the best thing I could think of: make use of this time and read a book. The day before I had started reading Sahil Bloom’s book The 5 Types of Wealth, the top #2 book in Amazon at the time of this writing. In the book he explains and shares his point of view about that there are five different types of wealth –hence, the name of the book–, related to the following concepts: Time, Mental, Social, Physical and Financial. I was amazed just by reading the prologue, which was a straight and direct punch in the heart, where he starts speaking about his life experience and how he was able to turn it upside down, for good, by following certain methods and lessons gathered with time. So I kept on reading and reading, until I got to the first chapter that explains the first type of wealth: Time.
The chapter was profound, so deep, that at one point I had to stop, get up and go grab a couple of tissues and wipe my tears. There he speaks about how we treat, manage and mostly not appreciate the time we have –or have had. What are the things we are accustomed to doing, like in autopilot mode, and that some of us don't even realize it until it's too late, providing very deep and meaningful examples for a few case scenarios. He also provides a few exercises that you should do, all of them through writing, in order to make the most out of the entire book.
Before getting into what I wrote and its details, as well as my intention for writing this, I think it's good to add some things from the book which I deeply connected with, which will allow me to connect after with my own words and thoughts. Sahil speaks about a national survey that is made annually in the U.S., called the The American Time Use Survey. It's used to get information on how people use and allocate their time from several daily activities. The results shown there were so profound and meaningful, that hit me hard and I immediately started trying to compare mentally the data with my own life, past, present and future. The survey consists on people filling and providing real-time responses during the day, related to how they spend their time and with whom. Next are the graphs and results for just 4 of a total of 6:
TIME SPENT WITH FAMILY
Based on the graph, you can notice that the time we spent with our family members, such as parents, siblings, grandparents and so on. It has its highest peak when we are kids, in part because we have a dependency mostly from and with our parents. Then, as we start the journey through adolescence it starts decreasing more and more as the years go by until we reach adulthood, where it gets steady and just fluctuates a bit. And we could all have the most perfect of explanations, reasons or perhaps, excuses for it. We have jobs, maybe a family and kids, we "have less time" for one family because we need to take care and prioritize the other. But, do we really? Do we have to cut out and sever a part of our lives to make room for another? I believe we don't, but I did that too. I fell into that trap when my daughter was born and when then Covid hit the world, which made it even worse. I started seeing my parents less and less, even before Covid, and then obviously it increased.
Luckily, if I may say, when the mother of my daughter and me separated, and perhaps because of some sort of necessity of help from them, we started seeing each other more and more. It's something that I'm able to reflect on now, but it happened naturally and I'm so grateful it did. We started going more to their home, during almost all weekends and as time went by, also during weeks. They helped me taking care of her, in case I needed to work, or go hanging out some day with friends if I felt like, or just because they were her grandparents and wanted to spend time together. At the beginning I honestly felt guilty, because I always kept having that thought on the back of my mind that said "why I didn't do this before". Why did I let myself –and my daughter– get so trapped in this vicious circle called "family life" and depraved her of spending that time with them as well, watching her grow, starting to speak, taking her first steps. Yes, it was a bit difficult because of Covid, but it reminds me of a quote by an american poet called Carl Sandburg that says:
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.
I honestly believe I used this coin unconsciously with them at first, and then very consciously, but it was for the best by far. It allowed my Dad to spend time with her granddaughter and watch her grow, the most he could. He was able to take her playing in parks, he started teaching her how to ride a bike. We were able to have breakfasts on the weekends I had her with me, and since we slept at my parent's house during those weekends, my Dad always knocked the bedroom door on Sunday's mornings and they went cuddling in the bed to watch TV for a bit, until it was time to get up and into the table. As for my Mom, she has been able to watch and be present in her entire growth process, from when she started going to school, taking vacations together to the beach, as well as having her own time together doing sleepovers and watching movies.
TIME SPENT WITH CHILDREN
In this graph, time spent with children has a peak that spans to an approximate amount of 20 years, which is the years since they are born until when they become adults and "leave the nest". After that, time spent with them decreases way faster as years go by. As Sahil perfectly describes it "There's a devastatingly short window during which you are your child's entire world. Don't blink and miss it". The data in here is so profound and hard, but it didn't made me feel bad like the previous one, although I think there's always room we I could have done more, I don't regret any part of the current journey.
Once the relationship definitely broke, I moved into a house and started living with a couple of friends, which for me was just a momentary place, a transition, until I was able to get back on my two feet again and find a place for my own. But I made the conscious decision to spend the most time I could with my kid, so I kept freelancing, when others –mainly my parents– always kept saying that I should get a steady and stable job. I didn't listen because my focus was pointing somewhere else, which was far more important: Ampa and Me.
During the day I was fully present, playing together, going to places, teaching her to read and write, until it was her time to go to bed. So when she was asleep, I jumped on the laptop and started working, only then, job was a no-go when we were together. I worked most days until 4:00 AM and to the point where my eyes could not stay open anymore. Went to bed for a couple hours until she woke up, and back again to face the day. It was hard and with time it became difficult to hang on with that level of lifestyle. I also noticed that I had started to be very sensible with her, mostly because I have been depriving myself from many hours where I should have been sleeping. So I made the conscious decision to stop, and focused on just working the hours that I could, between when she feel asleep and when my mind said to me that I was tired. Wether it was two or three hours, it didn't matter. What mattered was to be in the most perfect state of mind the next day to be there for her, present and well. The time to work, was still gonna be there if I managed to work smart, instead of working hard.
As I was able to spend more and more time with her, I also started developing some habits and routines that allowed me to be fully present, to make time worthwhile and to take conscious decisions, which in the end would reflect and impact both of our lives in a positive way, if I managed to be consistent, focused and stick to living by a simple but effective statement which I carved deeply in my mind: "If I am well, she will be well too". So I started meditating, which allowed me to take care of the important things regarding work and be focused, as well as being fully present as a parent on the times we were together; I started meeting new people and getting back in contact with old friends with whom I had lost connections. I even started partying a lot, even sometimes getting a bit drunk if I have to be honest, but never losing focus on what was really important; And most relevant from a "me" standpoint, I started getting in shape, working out, eating better and getting my health back. I had allowed myself get to a point where I was not comfortable within my own skin, I didn't liked my body at all, my appearance, and I was also worried about my health so I made doctor appointments to check if everything was fine, which luckily, it was.
All those little tiny things, taken step by step, allowed me to put myself together again and start enjoying life, start enjoying her and start enjoying me too. Being present, being conscious of even the smallest of things, which can be also often the most important and the ones we sometimes underestimate, are the details that make being a parent worthwhile. Being able to say NO to anything that gets between your child and you. Being able to attend any parent's meeting or event at school. Having the opportunity –through a conscious choice– to be able to go and pick my daughter from school every single day of the week, and in some days take her to school as well. Being able to make her sleep during nights, read books and stories, and waking up with her love, smile and uplifting energy in the mornings. Because that's time that I won't get back, those are moments that I won't be able to repeat, as they only happen once, and that no one can ever take back from me, from us.
TIME SPENT WITH FRIENDS
Time spent with friends has the highest peak around when we have eighteen and then goes down and declines to become sort of "steady" as we get older. This decrement has a lot to do with the fact that when we are younger we tend to meet –as a common belief– a lot of people and have a lot of "friends" with whom we hang out, go to parties and vacations. But as time passes, we start narrowing the circle more and more, until we manage to build a solid group of the most close friends.
By the time I had about nineteen I sort of matched that assumption about "having a lot of friends", or at least that's what I wanted to believe, because before that age I have to say I was not even close to it –but that's part for another story. As my adolescence went by, I managed to close that circle and come up with a very good group of friends, mostly women, and the ones with I'm still friends with until today. But before that, as I assume is part of every natural process with human beings and relationships, friendships has its ups and downs. Periods of distance, not because of fights, but because of how life is or because that's the way I saw it a few years ago. You get into love relationships which turns your world upside down, most likely you fall in love as well –for sure I did–, and you get immersed into it so bad, that's like you blindfolded yourself and you cannot see anything but that.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others.
The quote above is from Oscar Wilde's novel A Woman of No Importance (1893). It suggests that love often begins with self-deception–we convince ourselves that it's perfect, by completely ignoring flaws, bad situations and red flags. Over time, that self-deception that started with us can be extended to others, like friends and family, since we try to maintain or justify the illusion of a happy and perfect relationship. I have found myself in that scenario many times and most often than not, it ended badly. And because of action and consequence, I also ended up pushing away the ones that were always there.
Luckily for me, those friendships were as strong as they can be. I eventually came back to making the connections again, our lives may have changed for several reasons and situations, but there's one thing that time cannot take away from it: Love. This type of love, the one that's born between friends, is completely different from the one of a love-relationship. If nurtured and well taken care of, it cannot be broken, not even by the pass of time. It can be measured in decades and fortified even through bad times, differences or even fights, it's unconditional. American writer, philosopher and artist Elbert Hubbard has the following quote attributed to him, and even when there's no direct source that can confirm it belongs to him, I believe is both simple and profound:
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
At its essence, it aligns with a few key life philosophies, amongst the one that highlights more to me is the one that speaks of authenticity and the values that are part of a genuine human connection. It suggests that true friendship is based on a deep understanding and unconditional acceptance, unlike the type of relationships that might be based on idealization. It allows to imply that real friends don't just know your best qualities–they know also your flaws, mistakes, and struggles, and they still choose to stay, to love you. Therefore, authentic and unconditional friendship is constant, loyal and honest–unlike love, which can sometimes be fleeting, obsessive and even isolating, if not handled well and considering the self as part of the equation.
I believe that we should not take friendship for granted, not because we might know that people will still be there if or when we need them, but instead for something much more harder to accept: because their time may have already come and they won't be here. At the end it doesn't take much effort to return the favor, you don't need to make a five hour call or keep in touch every single day. What you can do instead is care. Send a message in the morning saying you love them, asking if everything's going good, making the time to organize with each other, more sooner than later, to share a few drinks, eat something nice or just chat and laugh. Is the simplest things and the tiniest actions that allow to keep that love intact.
TIME SPENT ALONE
By looking at the graph you can notice that this one differentiates a lot with the previous ones. The amount of time you spent alone in your early years is low, since you're surrounded by many people from your inner circle like family and friends. As you start growing, from adolescence to adulthood, and then into the part of life where if you had kids they are adults as well and maybe they have their own family, the time that you are within yourself increases non-stop.
A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you.
This quote is attributed to the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. His philosophy emphasizes subjects such as inner reflection, self-awareness, and spiritual growth. In this case it relates to the concept of Solitude, where is seen as a way to connect with the divine, deepen your self-understanding, and being able to free oneself from external distractions.
Even when I don't agree with some concepts and statements on his writings, I do believe there's something extremely powerful about the concept of Solitude. I remember speaking with some friends at one point in life about our fears, and I said that one of my fears –along with the fear of death– was being alone or be "left alone". Perhaps that's one of the reasons why during a period of my life I went on an blinded journey we're I just grabbed to anyone and anything that made me feel I was not alone, wether might have been friends that were not "so friends", or loving partners with whom relationships didn't lasted too long, or if they lasted longer, they weren't the best of all.
I believe that all of us have at some degree that fear within, and it mislead us and forces us to take decisions –conscious or unconscious–, which at the end of the day result in bad experiences. I spent a bit of time trying to deconstruct or break down the previous quote from Rami, while also reading a bit more some other things from him, and I think I got to some understanding that can make sense for most of us:
"A little while alone"
I believe most people, including myself a while ago, confused "being alone" with "loneliness", which I think is what my fear was related to. Since I started meditating, which I have been doing for quite a couple of years now, I've been able to understand myself, who I am at my core, which are the things that I really like and which ones I don't. I'm confident enough to decide which things, people and situations I allow and accept in my life, and not spend time or preoccupying about the ones that are completely off-limits and are not positive at all. I'm able to detect when something, someone or any given situation takes me off balance, and I can use the tools I've learned in order to come back at it, rapidly and consciously.
People also have a misconception regarding meditation. I've heard things like "I cannot meditate", "I am not able to silence my mind" or "That's not for me", and I'm 99% sure that that's because they have the common belief that in order to be able to meditate, you need detach yourself from the world around you, silence your mind and stop your mind from thinking. According to Emily Fletcher, who founded the Ziva meditation school, she points directly to that. I extracted this quote from Vishen Lakhiani's book The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, which says:
The point of meditation is not to get good at meditation. The point of meditation is to get GOOD AT LIFE... And if we go into this thinking that the point of meditation is to get good at life–not to get good at meditation, and if we accept the reality that no one can give their mind a command to stop, then it's so much more innocent, so much more playful, and so much more enjoyable. Trying to give your mind a command to stop thinking is as effective as giving your heart a command to stop beating–it doesn't work.
My intention with this has to do with the fact that when most of us try something new, if it does not work almost immediately, we give up. We stop trying. We prevent ourselves from finding something new that can contribute positively to create transformative habits and proper ways of living, which in the end can also contribute to others and make this world a better place. You don't need to stop the world from keep on going, in fact it will with or without you; you just need to step outside the forrest for a while, in order to see all the trees, see the beauty that's outside of the cabin that your mind is. If you manage to understand yourself to the best of your abilities, you will be able to understand also everything and everyone that's around you. You will be able to be empathetic, which is something that lacks a lot in today's world.
"In your room"
The room here symbolizes your personal and private space, the sanctuary that your mind is. It's where you have full control over your thoughts, which then translate into your emotions, and further define the decisions and actions you take on a daily basis. It's also where your wisdom lies, along with all the knowledge that allows you to live your life as its fullest. If you let others or the situations in your life influence your thoughts, then the emotions you feel will have a direct and negative impact on your decision-making abilities. But instead, if you're completely aware and in control of your thoughts, your emotions and actions will be completely aligned with your goals, desires, dreams and the direction in which you want to live your life.
"Will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given to you."
Rumi suggests that the most valuable things in your life, such as clarity, purpose and inner-wisdom, can only be found within yourself. No one else can provide you that, because no one else knows you better than the way you know yourself. External "gifts" such as money, material possessions or even validation from others, cannot even compare to the insights and peace that Solitude brings. Then, if we are able to understand Solitude, it can become a tool for personal growth, rather than something we are afraid of. In a world filled with social media posts, 9-to-6 exhausting office jobs, unhealthy relationships and a lot of incessant noise, then Solitude becomes a luxury.
I think I see time differently now, not just because of the book which obviously helped, but because it made me realize what I've doing with it during the last couple of years and how I've dealt with it. Is neither good or bad, is just different. I've managed to make more with it than before, wether is by the moments I have enjoyed with my daughter, friends or family, or for myself. I'm more conscious about it, more aware that you cannot take no moment for granted.
Is about noticing the small things, that usually we just let pass by as if they were meaningless. Like going for a walk and letting the sun touch your face. Getting together with friends or family and not keep starring at your phone. Enjoying that lovely coffee in the morning before you start your usual day. In the moments you blink there are other million things happening around you, that perhaps you didn't noticed. Maybe you missed something important someone said, or you missed a laugh and a lovely word that was intended for you. Maybe you missed that girl or boy passing by that might have been the love of your life, or a good friend to be with. We become so trapped in our own problems, tangled inside our own thoughts, that we forget that they will eventually be no more, because as cliche as it sounds, nothing is forever, not even our problems.
There's a beautiful feeling that comes immediately attached when we learn to be present, when we learn and understand that our time here is finite, that it has an end date. We may not know when that will be, but until then, we can decide how to make the most out of it. That feeling is called peace. So be at peace knowing that everything is fine, but it depends on you to find it, hold on to it, and don't let anything or anyone convince you that life is meant to be anything other than fully lived. Love without losing yourself, cherish friendship without conditions, embrace solitude without fear, and above all, spend your time wisely—because in the end, time is not something we keep; it is something we use.