Have you ever Googled? Surely you have if you've
done any surfing on the waves of the Internet.
On each page of the
Google list of suggested pages is this phrase:
"Tip: Save time by
hitting the return key instead of clicking on "search"."
"Save Time." I find this to be an integral indicator of the times. We
all strive to save time. Even the Government mandates the saving of
time with "Daylight Savings Time."
Now, I've added up all
the hours I have saved in my lifetime because of daylight savings time,
and so far the total is a big, fat goose egg. I find that any way I
divide it, 24 hours comes out twenty four hours (even spelling
it differently gives me no more time, just takes a little more time to
write it out is all.)
This holds true of
hitting "enter" instead of clicking the mouse as well. It takes me
longer to read the silly words on the screen that says to hit "enter"
than it does to click "search." Besides, I already have my mouse in
hand, which I need to move the cursor to the listing I want, which I
have to set down to click the "enter" key.
And I think of how
much webspace is wasted posting that silly piece of advise page after
page.
Saving time.
Saving time reminds me
of one of the stores here in town that likes to circle on the receipt
how much a customer "saved." Now, for one thing, the products (and
produce) they sell are usually outdated or in some other wise not fit
for sale in a regular store. On top of this, the chances are very good
that it cost the same or more in that store than
it does at a regular store.
Another place noted
for "saving money" is the local Thrift Store. Now, when I was young
(and even until the last ten years or so) a thrift store was
a place to save money. Now I find that what is sold therein is often
not in salable condition, and even at that, it sells for more than the
same item can be purchased in a regular store when on sale. One example
of this is an old, beat-up guitar with several strings missing selling
for over two thirds what it cost in a department store. (I bought four
just like it at less than the Thrift store price,
brand new and warranted, when a department store had them on sale).
Saving money is a lot like saving time. If we do
find a way to save it, what will we do with it?
That store that likes
to circle the amount of money saved. I told the clerk who informed me
of my savings: "Oh good! I'll rush right down with this receipt and
deposit my savings in my account."
In fact, I had no more
money in my pocket after I went shopping in that
store than I had before I entered the store. In
further fact, to get the receipt that informed me of my savings, I had
to spend what little money I did have when I
entered the store.
What did I buy with all the money I've saved? Let's say, somewhere down
the line I actually did save some money: what did
I do with it? Did I put it in savings for a rainy
day? Maybe I payed it toward a bill I owe. No, the chances are I spent
it on some junk food, cigarettes, or something else unwise and
unhealthy.
This is the "American
Way." This is the result of "Civilization." Perhaps (and very likely)
in a Third World country extra money would be spent on necessities and
to pay off bills. But we "civilized folk" believe that a dollar saved
is two dollars spent. Indebtedness keeps this
country afloat.
And it's the same with time. We complain about having too little time.
Yet we surround ourselves with time-saving devises (that cost money to
buy, maintain and replace) that takes up money earned from our job; the
job that brings in the money to spend on the time-saving devises that
uses up our money, and that we don't have time to use.
It reminds me of the
guy (almost all Americans) who will drive to the next town just to buy
gas for his car because it is a few cents cheaper. Of course he spends
a lot more on the gas it takes to get to that station than if he had
bought his gas locally. Or I think of the woman who buys a $30,000 new
car because it is going to cost a thousand to fix up the old one. But
even if the cost was to be the same, the difference in insurance
premiums and upkeep, and the fear of scratches and theft (and dusty
little footprints on the carpet, not to mention chocolate ice cream
drippings on the upholstery) would far outstrip the savings.
We Americans waste the money we earn: and we throw away the time we
struggle to save. Why do we do this? Because there is something we
value more than time and money. "If I only had the time I could do so
many wonderful things." "If I only had the money I could do so many
wonderful things."
Our lack
is our excuse for not doing and being who we know we should be. If we had
the time and money, we would be expected to be who we claim we are, and
are cheated by fate from becoming our potential. Yet we know that those
who do acquire what they say they need, such as
people who win the lottery, or those of us "fortunate" enough to reach
retirement age, fail to do what they claimed they
wanted to do when they were in their "wishful without" stage of life.
And we also fear this
same failure. We waste what we have. And if we had more, we would have
that much more to waste, be it time or money.
Tumbleweed
Quotes
"Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by
little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." ~William
Faulkner
"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once." ~John
Archibald Wheeler
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." ~Henry
David Thoreau
"Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but
with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of
power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the
moving." ~Martin Amis
"The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked." ~Tillie
Olsen
"Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.". ~Dion
Boucicault
"Time goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, Time stays, we
go." ~Henry Austin Dobson
"For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight
hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work." ~Doug
Larson
"But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and
each moment is a day." ~Benjamin Disraeli
"Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!....
his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are
mutes." ~Charles Dickens
"Time wastes our bodies and our wits, but we waste time, so we are
quits." ~Author Unknown
"Time is the fire in which we burn." ~Delmore Schwartz
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from
day to day" ~William Shakespeare
"You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by;
but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by." ~James
Matthew Barrie
"A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are
vaguer than yours." ~John B. Priestly
"It strikes! one, two, Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear
watch, Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest; Would thou
could'st make the time to do so too; I'll wind thee up no more." ~Ben
Jonson
"The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it
is as old as you are." ~Antonio Porchia,
"It's a strange thing,
but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow
down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up." ~J.K. Rowling
"Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time
on his side." ~The Talmud
"Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes Is a miser who always
wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years." ~Oliver
Wendell Holmes
"Time is making fools of us again." ~J.K. Rowling
"There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who
steals what is most precious to men: time." ~Napoleon I
"Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations." ~Faith
Baldwin
"Why won't they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the
instant, can't they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum.
The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping -
rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like
New Year's and Easter and Christmas - But, goodness, why need they do
it?" ~John Dos Passos
"How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door
you're on." ~Zall's Second Law
"The years like great black oxen tread the world And God, the herdsman,
goads them on behind." ~William Butler Yeats
"Time! the corrector when our judgments err." ~Lord Byron
"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only
you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other
people spend it for you." ~Carl Sandberg
"If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no
time." ~Elbert Hubbard
"Time flies on restless pinions - constant never." ~Friedrich
Schiller
"The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty
minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." ~C.S. Lewis
"Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who
can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its
design?" ~Paracelsus
"The time you think you're missing, misses you too." ~Ymber
Delecto
"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to
explain it to him who asks, I do not know." ~Saint Augustine
"Each moment has its
sickle, emulous Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep Strikes
empires from the root."~Edward Young
"The inertia hardest to overcome is that of perfectly good seconds." ~Martin
H. Fischer
"Watches are so named as a reminder - if you don't watch carefully what
you do with your time, it will slip away from you." ~Drew
Sirtors
"Time is the wisest counsellor of all." ~Pericles
"Time is the only thief we can't get justice against." ~Astrid
Alauda
"There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined,
for I could not give an alibi." ~Mignon McLaughlin
"Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is
gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even
while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at
once exists and expires." ~Charles Caleb Colton
"Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst." ~Willaim
Penn
"Time is the longest distance between two places." ~Tennessee
Williams
"Can an afternoon revert?" ~Carrie Latet
"Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds
my golden time!" ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow." ~Antonio
Porchia
"Whether we wake or we sleep, Whether we carol or weep, The Sun with
his Planets in chime, Marketh the going of Time."~Edward
Fitzgerald
"Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with
it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have
little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will
have little to hope from his friends." ~Charles Caleb Colton
"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." ~Henry David
Thoreau
"The Present is a Point just passed." ~David Russell
"Methinks I see the wanton hours flee, And as they pass, turn back and
laugh at me." ~George Villiers
"Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly
the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy
more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save
time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and
forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still
have an entire tomorrow." ~Denis Waitely
"Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which
every day produces, and which most men throw away." ~Charles
Caleb Colton
"One must learn a different... sense of time, one that depends more on
small amounts than big ones." ~Sister Mary Paul
"Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly
misspent." ~Ambrose Bierce
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." ~Louis
Hector Berlioz
"Let not the sands of time get in your lunch." ~Author
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