While l am young, I have come to realize a few things about the way people 'spend their time' (notice how we say we spend time almost like it is a currency). In a society that allows us to work as many things for a living, the chief exchange is time for money.
Many people value their time as if it is a commodity, something earned or that can be given (or taken if your convicted as a criminal). It is also something invested, because the more time put into a task, the more one has invested their self into that work. By 'spending time' at something you like but don't do as a job, you might be wasting other commodities like money for the sake of having that time to yourself and directly gaining the benefits of that work.
Since before the industrial revolution, people have depended on a wage of labor in exchange for gold or money, then used to buy goods. The idea being that if you couldn't farm or build a house, you could at least earn money by working so that you can feed and shelter yourself. Sounds like a reasonable trade so long as the benefits of having a job indeed provide nourishment and leaves the worker with time to use the money that the worker has earned.
FINITE TIME
By this simple process of trading time for money, man-power and attention becomes a source of profit which is exchanged for a certain amount of money per hour. No matter how many hours you are able to work, whether it be a regular 40 hours or more like 60, there is always a limit to the amount of time you can work. None of us know how much time we have left, but we all know that our time to live is finite. Once you have "spent" an hour doing something, there is no way to get that hour back. Money is quite the opposite.
As we all know by the ever growing economy, there is an unlimited amount of money in the system, where states and governments regulate and alter the amount of money that is on the market. No matter how much one can work, there will always be more money to make, and you could literally work your whole life away and never earn enough money to satisfy and bring peace of mind.
I guess what I'm getting at, is that you could effectively work your whole life for an insignificant amount (compared with the the huge sums of money others own on the market) of a currency that is perpetually decreasing in value.
This means that one hour of work in the 20th century is worth less in the future or in the 21st century, because those earned or saved dollars have dropped in value. Working is a logical choice so long as the benefits outweigh the faults, but if the money you earn today does not feed you in twenty years, then what is the point of working in excess just to save money.
To suggest that I should dedicate my time to a business where the only benefits I gain are the exchange of my time for money that will decrease in value seems a waste. I would rather put my efforts into something that I gain the benefits and reap the rewards to, even if it doesn't fill my pockets.
There will always be more money to earn down the road, but we cannot earn that time back.
INFINITE MONEY
So why are we so fixated on money more than the free time we have? If there is an infinite amount of money, why are we so concerned with getting more no matter how much we have, no matter what we would rather do.
Would you keep working your job if you know you could cover expenses and feed yourself on your own without a full-time job?
I would suggest there is a feeling of security that comes with a full bank account or owning property. People want money so that they don't have to worry about it tomorrow. They don't want to worry about feeding their family, or what bills have to be paid first, or if they will have a job in ten years when the economy alters. People want money so they can feel secure.
In a society where we exchange our time so we can have money and feel financially secure, what happens when the return investment (getting paid) is no longer dependable, or sufficient. Most people in this situation decide to work more and earn more money, at the expense of giving up more time.
What happens when the value of money is no longer enough to fund our lives both now and in the future, and causes us to lose the security of that certainty? The indispensable time we have in life is already being traded for deplenished credit to a system where the minute amount of money one works for has no stability.
Time for Money, but your time is worth far more.
It's not a robbery, but an accepted way of livelihood where the businesses we work for reap the rewards of our labor. Is it worth giving up your time, especially your younger years? What if you knew that the time we have also degrades as it passes? Would you value time more than money if you knew that each year that passes was experienced as shorter than each previous year?
CHOICES
I have been dwelling on a choice: Do I want to spend the majority of my time as a youth working, so that I can have prosperous times in the future? Or do I want to take advantage of the time I have now in certain hopes that I can feed myself sufficiently in the future, by other means that have been developed through working on my own avenues not associated with a business. Not that I have the choice to not work, but I rather use the other 20-30+ hours of my time doing more enriching things in my life like art or learning to garden. Would I rather work and invest in a job so that I can be financially stable, while sacrificing my early years to the profit and benefit of that company? Where is there more risk?
What if I told you that the very time we experience changes as we age? Would you value your early years more if you knew that you would experiences them as actually longer and fuller compared to the later years?
It has been understood scientifically that as perceptive beings, we witness time differently depending on our circumstances. The time we experience is altered by the events, actions and emotions happening to us.
TIME DILATION
1. Space-time dilation (this happens when you got at fast speeds, have changes in gravity, and perception of time changes in regards to position)
This subtle change in time occurs mostly at the speed of light, and involve gravity and mass of objects. Based on Einstein's Theory of relativity, it explains how time alters in relation to the surroundings. An astronaut on the International Space Station witnesses time faster because of the relation time has with gravity further from earths gravitational pull. If this holds true, like in the movie Interstellar (2014), time would go much slower on a planet more massive than earth.
2. Subjective time dilation (this is how each of us experience time based on what we are doing, if its a new experience or familiar, if it is fun or unpleasant)
This change in perception of time has to do with personal experiences with the world around us. As our eyes process our surroundings, it works at different paces depending on previous experiences. We witness time slower in emergencies, in new situations or when we are highly focused, while time seems to go by faster when we are familiar with our surroundings, are doing repetitive tasks or mentally disengaged.
This is why a fun day at your favorite beach seems to fly by, while 20 minutes in an unfamiliar office drags on for what seems life forever.
3. Age dilation (as we get older, the time we experience in the present feels faster because it is compared with the perspective length of time in the past.)
When we are young, a summer feels like it last forever, and each month seems a long time. As we age we start to measure time in years, and whole years seems to fit within the same frame of a month or summer when we were younger. This is an extension of the previous dilation, but over a longer expanse of time. One year of life at 10 literally feels longer than one year at 50 because the fifty year old has more years to compare it to. One years seems less significant when you've lived fifty times that.
TIME INTENSITY
As we age each moment of experience becomes a smaller percentage of our total time of existence. When we are eight, four years becomes half our life. When we are 40, 20 whole years becomes half our life.
Following the pattern of half-lives, our perspective of time changes at a degrading exponential curve. of course this fluctuates based on subjective time, where for example if we spent a whole year in another country, it will seem to have lasted longer than the previous year of doing the same normal life routine because of subjective time dilation.
The same goes for your early twenties compared with your late sixties. Comparing each year to the previous other years changes your perspective of time and makes those early years seem fuller and to have lasted longer. The intensity of time is stronger in our early years than our older years and we should take advantage of this by spending that valuable and deplenishing time on our own growth.
If we subjectively experience our youthful years as a larger portion of our experienced time, then why would I want to spend that time working and dedicating it to someone else's profits. if I can do the same thing for more money later in life, why would I want to dedicate all of my energetic and productive years invested in someone else's benefits.
I would much rather take that time to develop my own skills, learn and practice, have time to spend on new and exciting things...instead of cooped up at a desk or behind a grill. The money made at a job when we are young does not stick around for very long, so I think I would rather work just enough to pay for my expenses, and the rest of my time spent engaged in the things I love.
CONCLUSION: FINDING MEANING IN YOUR TIME
While we are young, we should take advantage of the time dilation. Waiting until retirement to enjoy life means those last years will from our perspective fly by faster than if we took that time for ourselves during our youth. We live in a society where we no longer have to labor constantly at a job to make ends meat, yet we are still urged to work all our waking hours.
If your job brings you meaning and joy, by all means stay with it, but if you are like me where your job only provides financial security, remember that there is only so much that that job can offer in the long run and that you are better off dedicating some of your time for yourself so that you can actually live, instead of exchanging all your life and free-time for money.
Money and work comes and goes, but time only goes. We can do things to witness time more fully, by being aware and engaging in life, or we can grind our hours away making money for an uncertain future.
I would rather invest time in my own life, in the things that bring joy to me and help me find meaning in existence. I would rather spend my time growing plants, taking pictures, writing and reading and not have and excess amount of money, than to spend every waking hour of my time working for someone else, bored and having time fly by while being temporarily more financially secure.