Time changes everything, this much I can guarantee. Spend a little with me.
Often when I hear someone ask what the cost of any given product is I leave the dollars behind. My mind immediately goes to the hours and days of a life given the pursuit of all of our necessities. If in fact necessities is a good word. Like you, I like nice things and a very cozy life. Like you I look for more hours in the day. The decades teach us that time is the ultimate luxury, one of the precious few things money cannot buy.
Years ago I listened as a client told me a story. She was now past 70, still beautiful and gracious, even though fighting an auto immune disease. She shared that life had been so sweet and good, and how she had taken a job in her late twenties to help buy a refrigerator for her growing family. Well what happened next was another purchase then another and then a career where there had once been a homemaker. Four sons grew up, a family matured and flew from the nest. Still she worked on, ever wondering what the real price of that refrigerator had been. Retirement moved them from the Chicago suburbs to northwest Arkansas. She was not bitter, she was wise. She was telling a young family man with a business a cautionary tale.
Only now, a few decades later does it start to sink in. Think carefully about the trades you want to make with your precious time. I rise to see the sun crest the trees, back lighting the view with 10,000 shades of green. I stop to smell the roses and touch them too, so the scent will linger in my hand. I require less and enjoy more. I wait anxiously for the new blossoms of springtime, more so with every passing year. I look into the eyes of those I love and I want so want to say grab life and hold on, drink it, taste it, revere it. The meter is running and time changes everything.
