The most precious commodity

  • Posted on: 29 April 2013
  • By: Jay Oyster

My wife and I watch our six year old son run around every day, from school to playing with his neighborhood friends, to spending time doing homework, and maybe watching some TV, when there's enough time left over, and we laugh when he laments how hard his life is. Sure, he's got time pressure, but when you're six, I don't think you have any idea what a harsh reality the pressure of time will be later in life. How could you? I know that I probably acted just the same way when I was six. And I felt how unfair it was that I couldn't stay up until midnight like Mommy and Daddy did.

I look at the lives that Adriana and I have put together, now. And I look at the lives of other parents and grown-ups around us. We have our jobs. We have our housekeeping and yardwork. we have our aspirational work, such as woodworking for me and jewelry making and her business for my wife. And we have our family and friend obligations . . . birthday parties, soccer matches, trips to relatives' houses for the holidays, and we have our societal obligations: time spent in line at the DMV, time spent doing taxes, time voting . . . all those thousands of things that we have to accomplish every year.

My son understands that he's often short of time . . .mostly when he wants to stay up and watch another episode of Scooby Doo or Power Rangers. But I wonder if I should tell him what a real time crunch life will become. Should I even try? Should I want him to know about that?

But more importantly, would he even understand?  I doubt it.   it's probably one of those things you have to experience to understand. Time is the most precious commodity, because it is the most limited in life. You gets your alloted amount, and there ain't no more. So it's important to use all of it as well as we can. Someday, he'll understand. Just as I only now understand that sad and wistful smile on my Mother's face when I was a young boy, rushing around from thing to thing, lamenting how hard my life was.