The Value of Time

I hope you all had a great week. My son got his license a few weeks ago and he is anxious to drive longer distances on busy roads at night to visit friends. In the spirit of the well known truth that whatever we practice we will get better at my son and I have spent several evening hours driving together so he can develop his skills.

One of the positive side effects of this uninterrupted time together is the opportunity to talk. One night we were chatting away and my son laid out a scenario for me. Each day I get $86,400 to spend. If I don’t spend the money I lose it at the end of each day. The next day, I get a new $86,400 to spend or lose. Then he asked; “Under those circumstances would you spend the money?” The obvious answer is yes of course- if I didn’t use it, I would lose it. Then he said, “Well that is how many seconds we have each day. We should use them all.”

I thought about his story. It is such a clear decision when it comes to money but with seconds and hours we all sometimes struggle to “Take Our Time” (use our time fully & mindfully). It was a powerful reminder and I was proud of my teenage boy for taking his time to think about that.

I shared this story with my classes this past week and we practiced using all of the seconds in the class fully and mindfully. I offered extra reminders on how to “make the most” of each pose, even in Childs pose and Savasana. When we practice being fully present in our bodies on the mat, it allows us to be more in touch with the same concept off of it. Time is finite and even MORE valuable than money because (unlike the story) there is no guarantee of more seconds tomorrow; regardless of how we spend them today.