Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Most people look at time with regret and rarely like to reflect on it. With the New Year around the corner though, it might be a good time to think about things. As we look into 2012 we look at a mere span of time. We see 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds. Each tick of the clock holds a different meaning, and we have no idea what they are going to be. Time is a gift. It is possibility. Time is all the things that could be. 
 
This gift of time is not yours alone. It is a universal thing we are all given in equal sums. No matter what you have in your bank account, what car you drive, or the square footage of your house, you will get no more then twenty four hours in a day. There is sixty seconds in each minute if you have a trust fund or not. It is your measure that you did not pay for, you have not earned, yet you will receive regardless of your station in life. 
 
Another important thing about time is that you cannot stop it. There is no way to slow it down, turn it off, or adjust it. Time marches on. So you can look forward to what it has to offer you, or you can waste it counting gray hairs and wrinkles. You can spend it reflecting on regrets or you can spend your time with grace and wonder.

Once time is gone, it is gone. You can not get it back. So spend it wisely. The future is uncertain but the outcome will always be the same. Your time here will end, but what you take to the next chapter is how you spent your time. So you can be a wasteful miser and have nothing to show for your time, or you can go into your next life, that afterlife, with investments of time. Time is the currency of memory and character. You can't take a big screen with you, but you can take a story worth telling. You tell me what has a more lasting value. 
 
Time is one of our most valuable possession, yet we can waste it. We can worry over it. We can spend it on ourselves. Or, as good investors, we can endow it in our family, our friends, our memories and those things of real and substantial value. We need not waste a second wondering what we should have done, and just do what we know is right. We should not sit on the sidelines and watch the evil that men do, but rather spend our time to thwart their desires. We should spend our time wisely and think of how to make the world a better place, and not just for us, but for those we love, and those we are yet to love. 
 
It is your time, so spend as you will. You will get your measure regardless of how you budget, but spending it is entirely up to you. So spend it on worry and regret like so many others will, or spend it with purpose and meaning. The value you give it is your own. This is the real gift of life, a true measure of wealth. Do with it what you will. It will not wait for you either way.