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 Now, for one thing, the products (and produce) they sell are usually outdated or in some other wise not fit for sale in a regular store.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