Fighting For Your Time

• SA Engages

October 28, 2019

How do you spend your free time? If we sit back and really look at our lives, it can be interesting to see how you really spend your days. There are so many things that we want to accomplish in our everyday lives, but when it comes down to it, we are almost never as productive as we would like to be in our spare time. Some people choose to try and rest or grow in various areas of their life, while others squander what is given to them and do not use their time wisely. Isn’t that something that we have always heard since we were kids? “Use your time wisely.” We’ve all heard it, but what does that really mean? It is different for each person because we are all heading in different directions and striving for different goals. For some, watching and critiquing movies or plays is the best use of their time, while for others, choosing to analyze and study the stock market is the most productive thing they can do. We each need to find the best way to use our time.

Look around our world – there are so many things that each one of us wants to do, but it seems like we always wind up choosing to fill our time with the things that don’t matter. For example, I want to go to tutoring, counseling, exercise, listen to and write music, grow in my friendships, etc., but I seem to always wind up doing anything besides what I wanted to get done. In life, almost any activity that you are involved with will pressure you and make you feel like it is the most important thing in your life. It seems like everything fights for your time nowadays. Time is the most important and valuable thing that we can give, but we can never receive it back. Unless you are Doctor Strange, no matter where we go, time goes on and never returns. When we leave school, get sick, or go home, time refuses to stand still, and people move on with their lives. This should be motivation to get out there and make the best use of your time.

One of the biggest struggles with using your time well is trying to combat boredom. Boredom can be so draining, and too much of it can make you feel like you are sinking into a pit where you are incapable of doing anything. It is a gateway to laziness, which is the exact opposite of what we should be striving for. But there are healthy doses of boredom that can be good for you. In our day and age, it seems that instant gratification and satisfaction are the only things that people want. This is especially rampant among those surrounded by technology and electronics. Generally, when somebody gets bored, one of the first things that they do is to pull out their phone to “kill time”. This is not the approach that we should be taking when we have extra time lying around. I would argue that a healthy dose of boredom is good for the mind! With the right mentality, it can keep you from relying too much on instant gratification and can help you actually stop to look around and view the details and beauty that exist around us in life and in nature. A little bit of boredom can help somebody think and branch out into a creative outlet that they might never have tried before. I believe that cutting down on the amount of time we spend on electronics is crucial to reclaiming a healthier and more fulfilling lifestyle instead of a life run by technology.

Fight for your time! It is good to relax and rest; we are not able to perform our best without first taking the time to recharge. Do not get complacent with your life. Spend your time wisely! Get out and go rock climbing like you’ve been wanting to, make that playlist you’ve been telling yourself you would make, and go make those friends that you keep desiring. If you are wise with your time, you can accomplish anything that you want to do.

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