The Value of Time
Photo by flickr user jek-a-go-go/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Guest post by Cheryl Nordyke
There are moments in our lives that each of us realizes time is something to value. For each one of us this discovery comes at different points. Being raised by my grandparents and growing up around great aunts and uncles I was privy to this information early on. My grandmother was the youngest of 9 children and my summers were spent at family reunions and sometimes the unfortunate funeral. Life and the how truly quick and fragile it can be came as a clear understanding to me at a young age.
I remember reading the quote by Denis Waitley
“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 you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.” I also remember thinking how funny that the world may not know this.
As a parent this knowledge and understanding has once again been a gift. When my daughter was in the toddler years that we can often find challenging I would look at it with appreciation and knowing that these days would never be mine again so if there were bad days mixed with the good it was still that day with her that was the gift. Through the middle school days when it appeared that every rule we had was an opportunity for defiance, I again reminded myself that these days were mine only once and that inside each day is a memory, a positive to capture.
Now she is 17 and a junior in high school. She just returned home from the New Year holiday with her dad and again I was given a gift greater than I could have imagined. While catching up she reflected on her visit and said, “Its funny Dad says he misses me yet while I am there he seems to not recognize how brief our time is together.” I have one more birthday while she is living at home, one more 4th of July one more Thanksgiving. I have the gift of knowing that in the mist of the trials our children sometimes put us in, the reality is we get, if we are the lucky ones, 18 Christmas Mornings, 18 Birthdays, 18 New Years with our children and then they are off making their own lives. For me my daughter is healthy and very much a part of my life. I think this is mainly because I have this gift of appreciating and respecting time. I have never tried to be her best friend, but I have shown her I value the time we have together and recognize how brief it is once it has passed.
My gift to you is this understanding that I have had my entire life. The knowledge of the words from Denis Waitley and how much so many people wish they could purchase more time. Respect time, appreciate time and you will find you have more time of joy and happiness.
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Cheryl Nordyke and Kim Wierman are the founders of Waves of Gratitude - a company that exists because of their belief that when life presents you with professional and personal difficulties, a strong foundation of gratitude can help turn those difficulties into opportunities. The owner’s resolve to build a future based on a foundation of gratitude is unwavering. The pair created an online store to give everyone the opportunity to “wear” powerful symbols of gratitude, jewelry and apparel made to personalize the concepts of hope, love, legacy, creativity, optimism, inspiration, confidence and awakening that make everyone beautiful inside and out.
