Perspective affects how we experience everything, including time. This opening line from Accordion has been tossed around my mind for years, and I couldn't understand why it stuck with me.
Phrases like this are deceptively simple by design and easier to understand than explained. I'm not making a point about DOOM's lyricism, and idk if he’s the originator or quoting some obscure reference.
Hidden in this little phrase are some big concepts worth writing books about. But I’ll try to use this IG caption.
You control your time
Just by living, we own our time. We decide where, how, and with whom we spend our time as we navigate the world. You are in control of your time, at least to start. Notice how kids cherish their time?
We give up that control more and more
As we get older and less inclined to cause a disturbance, we lend our time to pretty much anything. We engage in so many social and financial contracts we become obliged to spend our time at certain places with certain people.
By the time we’re old enough to do the things we dreamed about as kids, we’ve contracted ourselves into time debt.
Time debt is when we don’t love the moments we’re living through and desire to live in a different moment. This is when our time doesn’t belong to us anymore. We’re living someone else’s time.
Many jobs buy your time by the hour. If you don't love the job, you don't love your time there. Because someone has already bought time, you have to live it out until you get to the time they left over for you – the weekend.
This goes past hourly jobs and includes how we spend our time socially. Time spent reading the dictionary, watching Netflix, or talking with a friend could all be a waste if you’d rather be somewhere else.
Seconds slip by when we can’t wait to move on to the next. ️
The easy fix is to only do things you love and cherish, nothing else. But that’s not life.
The effective method may be to love everything you do, no matter what.
Catch every grain of sand.