Yet, despite all our modern tools to give us more time, most of us only have less time. For some, we are using that extra time to do much more than the regular responsibilities of the day. Such as volunteering for several programs at church, community, along with helping family and friends. Perhaps an extra job to make "ends" meet, developing a social program of your own, inventing a better product, evaluating new ways to consume less energy and help the environment around your own home. To some other people they see you as having "too much time" on your hands, but the reality is that you mastered our modern tools to give you more time, thus allowing you to do so much more.
Today, for most kids graduating High School, they will spend 15,000 hours in front of a screen and only 11,000 hours in a classroom. Our modern electronic babysitter has pre-schoolers watching 5,000 hours of television. By the time you reach the age of 75 years, the average person will spend 13 YEARS of their LIVES watching television, about 3 YEARS watching commercials! Opening Junk Mail will consume 8 MONTHS of our lives, while we spend 6 MONTHS sitting at a red traffic light.
So how much "time" do we spend on what we truly value and then how much time is left over for us to help save the world? With all of today's time saving conveniences, this should be no problem, right?
Surveys show that most people are not managing their time well at all and they are allowing modern tools to consume their time instead of offering more time. Please spend a minute of your time now to read and learn the following:
An average married couple today spends only 4 minutes a day in meaningful conversation!
An average working couple spends only 30 SECONDS a day in conversation with their children!
An average American will only think about saving some energy when an extra high electric bill arrives.
An average American will only do something about saving energy and our environment just a few times in their life.
An average American who goes to church each week will spend only 6 MONTHS on a relationship with God by the age of 75 years. That 6 months is the same amount of time spent sitting at a red traffic light! Yet, we spend 13 years watching TV!
How many of us don't taste a food because we "think" we won't like it. How many of us don't experience the great outdoors because we fear it, how many of us spurn God because we don't understand. The author of Upper Room, The Way: 33AD to 57AD stated, "If you limit yourself to what you know and like, then you limit your knowledge." The answers can be found for everything if we only spend a little more "time" evaluating all the facts, the complete picture, with an unpretentious eye. This then will give us the truth and knowledge to be a VANGUARD in everything we do and we will have the time to do it. After all, science has proven that "time" doesn't exist. We humans made up time to measure the coming and passing of things. Therefore, not having the time isn't a problem and science's "no such thing as time" may just be the explanation to how God always was and always will be.
I will now take the time to thank Fr. Kevin Cronin, OFM (franmow.org) for providing survey data about TIME here on Earth.
Bill Lauto, GTG
Environmental Scientist at
GoingTrueGreen.com
Contribute your comments!