You Can't "Save" Time

One of the relentless things about life is that it is passing. Time spends itself no matter what we do with it. It moves at its own pace, and we can’t “save” any part of it. The only part we play in its passing is the purpose to which we put it. We can waste it or use it well. We can fill it full of leave it empty and idle. We can use it for the right things, or for the wrong things. And since we can’t “save it, since it is going to pass at its own pace, we had just as well decide to make the most of it.

Young people sometimes let the best years for preparation slip by. And most of us who are older have realized later in lire that we could have accomplished much more, if we had used our time when we were younger. As we get older, increasing responsibilities force us more and more to care for pressing problems rather than pursue our own preferences, More and more we are crowded into making a living, with less and less time for preparing to make one. And it is discouraging when a man with heavy obligations must try when he is older to acquire the training that he could have had when he was younger.

Of course many men have recovered from a late start, successfully—and heroically—and it can and will be done easier earlier. And in looking back we can sometimes see how much time we wasted in doing things that didn’t mean much.

Time is much like manna: we can’t hoard it. We can’t save it. Each day brings its own supply. We can use it as it comes, or let it waste away. And in making our choices we must remember that it we choose to do some things, we choose to pass up others—because time is too short to do everything. And we had better do earlier the things that are easier to do earlier and not forever be living our lives just a little too late.