Time Will Pass Anyway, Make Every Second Count⏳

Published: Fri, 04/30/21

"Don't Let the Fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of you doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use."

Earl Nightingale

I have a friend who taught me something profound about getting what you want from life. Time will pass anyway, he’d say, so no matter how big the task, you might as well start it now.
And he had a big task.
You know that saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well, the universe had sent me a teacher, although I wasn’t sure about the being ready aspect of it.

Some Days are Just Hard. They will pass.

My friend was building a home for his parents in Ghana, and he needed not just to provide the funds to build it but to furnish it entirely too. And all from a job, I considered in my wisdom to be menial work. He was a hard worker and a brilliant negotiator. He had this knack for finding items in good condition that were being thrown away or given away. In eight months, he had a container load full of every mod-com his mother’s four-bedroom home required, and in eighteen months, the house was built and ready. Even I was amazed at how effortlessly he achieved his goal, and it was a lesson that had stayed with me.

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Time passed, and like we all do, sometimes I slipped back into bad habits, following the lure of the crowd. Thankfully the universe didn’t throw her hands in the air and give up on me. I was reminded again of this way of thinking and decided to consistently apply it to every goal I have on my list. If I had kept reminding myself about what my Ghanaian friend had suggested, I’d be speaking Spanish today, I’d be running 5k a day, I’d be making more money, and my writing would reach more people.
I know what my problem is, and I share it with ninety-five percent of the population.
My lack of patience.

Leo Tolstoy said it best.

“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow — that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

When you have so many outside influences vying for your attention, from apps on your phone, to emails, to ads on YouTube, choosing the path of delayed gratification is unimaginably difficult. Why work hard now for a possible reward in the future when you can feel good in the moment with a quick Netflix fix or a dopamine hit from Facebook or Instagram.

Time will pass anyway.

Whatever your goal is, break it down into super manageable parts and consistently achieve them, and over time, you will see the magic take effect.

I know this.

I may have been late to use this idea in other areas of my life, but this is precisely what I do in my writing life. We need to discard the notion that it’s possible to achieve the kind of life we crave without hard work, no matter what the media tries to sell us.

If you take anything away from this, it’s that time is precious and cannot be stored or saved. You are given a certain amount of time each day, and it has to be spent. Have you got something better to do? I hope it improves your health, improves your wealth, improves your relationships, or your happiness. Because if it doesn’t, Gentle Reader, you need to question your purpose?

What you do or don’t do, is your choice but remember, time will pass anyway. Why not make it work for you.

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