Time and money
These are the two most important things in human life. We all know that each one of us has a reservoir of time meant for ourselves and that the reservoir levels are constantly depleting. Believers in destiny would say that no matter what modern medicine can achieve, one can never refill the reservoir. Near close encounters with death mean nothing because they are never really close if your reservoir is not empty - they'd say.
Then there is the money. The one thing that drives human behaviour in the modern society more than anything else. We spend our time for the money, we accumulate it, we measure it, we indulge in mathematics so we can grow our reservoir of money. Our entire being is defined in terms of our tendency to monitor the reservoir of money or otherwise. Someone becomes a Sanyasi because he doesn't want to monitor that reservoir any more. Someone else becomes a super success because they just cannot stop monitoring that reservoir. We have banks and other institutions that help us do the monitoring. In fact, I suspect the word 'monitoring' itself probably originated from the need to keep an eye on money. A super hero in any field never fails to proclaim that 'I am not doing this for money. I just love my job' - affirming the need to define one selves in terms of the affinity for money. I won't even get into the complex structures of the society and try to prove that they all owe their existence to deal with money - protect it, grow it, distribute it, steal it, beg for it, borrow it and, whatever other verb forms one can think of followed by 'it'.
So there is the time that just keeps diminishing and then there is money that just keeps - well you never know which direction it goes. We struggle all our lives to ensure we pour more and more into the money reservoir while never too concerned about the depleting time. We keep looking into the reservoir of money and feel happy or sad about it but hardly ever peep into the reservoir of time and check what's left.
If the society were really concerned about it, we would have seen banks that are set up to give us statements about how our time is being spent. It doesn't matter that there will not be any credits into our time account, or may be there will be when someone else selflessly performs what's really our duty, but will it not be great to know how much time we have spent in the week that just passed - fighting and doubting, yelling and killing, mulling and worrying? Will it not be great to have a bank that keeps track of the time we have spent with kids, friends, strangers, animals or whatever and see if it was an honest time or time spent with some ulterior or vested interest in mind? And then go through the 'time statement' to see if the most precious resource of our lives - the one that can never be reacquired once lost - is spent with the most pristine of intentions like that of a child? We have diaries but hardly ever do we do a balance sheet with those entries. Most of us gloat or suffer going through those entries at a later point in time.
For all the development in science and technology and evolution of human thinking, I wonder why no one has ever come up with a 'time bank'? May be it just about time to do that.
Niren
Then there is the money. The one thing that drives human behaviour in the modern society more than anything else. We spend our time for the money, we accumulate it, we measure it, we indulge in mathematics so we can grow our reservoir of money. Our entire being is defined in terms of our tendency to monitor the reservoir of money or otherwise. Someone becomes a Sanyasi because he doesn't want to monitor that reservoir any more. Someone else becomes a super success because they just cannot stop monitoring that reservoir. We have banks and other institutions that help us do the monitoring. In fact, I suspect the word 'monitoring' itself probably originated from the need to keep an eye on money. A super hero in any field never fails to proclaim that 'I am not doing this for money. I just love my job' - affirming the need to define one selves in terms of the affinity for money. I won't even get into the complex structures of the society and try to prove that they all owe their existence to deal with money - protect it, grow it, distribute it, steal it, beg for it, borrow it and, whatever other verb forms one can think of followed by 'it'.
So there is the time that just keeps diminishing and then there is money that just keeps - well you never know which direction it goes. We struggle all our lives to ensure we pour more and more into the money reservoir while never too concerned about the depleting time. We keep looking into the reservoir of money and feel happy or sad about it but hardly ever peep into the reservoir of time and check what's left.
If the society were really concerned about it, we would have seen banks that are set up to give us statements about how our time is being spent. It doesn't matter that there will not be any credits into our time account, or may be there will be when someone else selflessly performs what's really our duty, but will it not be great to know how much time we have spent in the week that just passed - fighting and doubting, yelling and killing, mulling and worrying? Will it not be great to have a bank that keeps track of the time we have spent with kids, friends, strangers, animals or whatever and see if it was an honest time or time spent with some ulterior or vested interest in mind? And then go through the 'time statement' to see if the most precious resource of our lives - the one that can never be reacquired once lost - is spent with the most pristine of intentions like that of a child? We have diaries but hardly ever do we do a balance sheet with those entries. Most of us gloat or suffer going through those entries at a later point in time.
For all the development in science and technology and evolution of human thinking, I wonder why no one has ever come up with a 'time bank'? May be it just about time to do that.
Niren
Comments