Time Is Money!

We have all heard the old saying that "Time is money". After giving it some thought I have began to realize that when it comes right down to it, time is really the only valid currency we have to exchange with each other. Bear with me a moment and I will try to explain my concept. Take a dollar bill out of your pocket and put it beside a piece of notebook paper. What is the difference really? Sure one is a pretty green with a picture of a dead person on one side and a building on the other but is that what makes it worth more? Of course not. The answer we get in school is that the dollar bill represents a dollar's worth of goods or services. Lets take that idea a bit further. I contend that the dollar bill represents a chunk of time. This concept is easy to understand if we are talking about a dollars worth of service from a plumber or lawyer. But what about something tangible such as a car. Well lets think about it for a minute. That car is made up of steel, plastic, rubber and glass. The steel is made of iron ore and other metals that have been mined, smelted, cast and shaped into a car. The iron and other metals are free from the earth. So what we are paying for is the time it took someone to locate, mine, smelt and shape the metal into the shape of the car. But what about the plastic components of the automobile you ask? Plastic is made from crude oil that, like metals, is in the earth and free for the taking. What we pay for is the cost of the time it took to find the oil, drill, haul, refine and ultimately create the plastic part for our car. The same goes for any other parts in our car or anything else we purchase. What we are paying for when we buy something is not the raw components that make up an item, but the time entailed in the creation of that item.

Now that we have that concept firmly in our mind lets go a step further. We all have a finite amount of time allotted to us in this life. It is different for each of us of course depending on a lot of variables such as genetics, lifestyle, environment and luck. But for arguements sake lets say each of us has 70 years or 613,200 hours in our lifetime savings account. That comes out to 613,200 hours. Unfortunately in our lifetime savings account, we don't draw interest so that is all we have. Of course about a third of this account will be used up in sleep. We can use the rest in any way we want. Now each hour of that time has a value. Each of us spends at least part of our time each day working to bring in money. The monetary value of an hour of my time will be different from the monetary value of an hour of the next persons time. For arguements sake lets say our time is worth $20 dollars an hour in the market place. That is what we actually bring home for an hour of work after all the deductions. Now lets go purchase that car we talked about earlier. We will buy a cheap car for say $20,000. Hard to imagine that this is the price of a cheap car but that is the reality of the times we live in. So out of our lifetime account that car will cost us 1000 hours of our life not counting the interest, insurance, etc. The point is that when we purchase something, we are not handing over pieces of pretty paper, but chunks of our life that we will never get back. This is necessary in order to obtain what we need to live. The question we have to ask ourselves when we purcase something is whether or not that item is worth the portion of our life that we are going to have to give up to obtain it. That is the real cost of an item.

So that is my arguement that the only currency we actually have is time. How are you investing your currency? After all, "time is money"!

The Wisdom Of Abraham Lincoln

Dear Johnston:

Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, "We can get along very well now," but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not _lazy_, and still you _are_ an _idler_. I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work, in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you,and still more so to your children, that you should break this habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it easier than they can get out after they are in. You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is,that you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of things at home--prepare for a crop, and make the crop; and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get. And to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May, get for your own labor either in money or in your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this, I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines, in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home, in Coles County. Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply, for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land,and if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession--Nonsense! If you can't now live _with_ the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not now mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dollars to you. Affectionately your brother,

A. LINCOLN.

The Reality of Politics

The state -- or, to make matters more concrete, the government -- consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.
-- H.L. Mencken

Attitude

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past ... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it."
~Charles Swindoll~

Points To Ponder By Confucius

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

Men's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart.

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

The superior man...does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow.

Pondering Our Destiny

For rarely man escapes his destiny.
~Ludovico Ariosto~

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
~William Jennings Bryan~

There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences.
~Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton~

Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads on to actions, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character fixes our destiny.
~Tryon Edwards~

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.
~Epictetus~

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
~Proverb~

Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.
~Sydney Smith~

Man's Duty

I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.
~Plato~

Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.
~Robert E. Lee~

Duty is ours; results are God's.
~John Quincy Adams~

The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.
~Alexis Carrel~

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
~Etty Hilsum~

The one predominant duty is to find one's work and do it.
~Charlotte Perkins Gilman~

Our blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret our duties.
~Alexander MacLaren~