What matters most

I once thought the most valuable commodity was comic books. I traded my entire collection for cash, which I then spent on a locket for a girl who I had never spoken to (she had her friend give it back to me). Through that one episode, my value system was challenged, and the quake has never settled. I feel reverberations now and again, whenever I am surprised at what passes for the commodity of value de jur.

Money seemed to be the tool of trade. If I saved enough pop bottles to trade in, I could have money to buy stuff. If I gave hours of my life to riding on a tractor, I could buy the ubiquitous “stuff” that everyone else had. If I got a good price for the wheat on my acreage, I could buy a new car. It seemed to be a liquid system of value and trade, and it seemed ideal…That was, at least, until I learned it was simply paper and tokens representing value. Ah, then I discovered credit, and with that, I built empires on the sands of shifting values.

Much later, I discovered that money and credit are both just manifestations of the trade of real, tangible goods. The barter system that commerce and capitalism were built on was a trade of true goods, physical things. In my journey, I soon came to understand that reality was the stock n’ trade of a true down-to-earth value system. Some real things we depended on were becoming scarce. I had always valued (like everyone else) gold and diamonds. I thought they were rare, but eventually I learned that diamond brokers keep the stock of diamonds bottlenecked, to simulate scarcity and drive up the price.

Now it appears people are starting to do the same with other true natural resources, and at the same rate as the diamond merchants. Take oil, for example—through an ever-increasing dependence on oil, we have come to see it as an essential. You cannot eat or drink oil, but we consider it just as vital as food or water. This value system has been manipulated to the point that we now pay $100 per barrel of oil; I’ve seen it triple in my short years. The truth is, we don’t really need oil nor diamonds nor gold. We need the essentials, like food, shelter, air and water.

It is slow coming, but the attentive will realize that even these are beginning to be rationed out and attributed with cash value. As the ‘green movement’ becomes more and more vocal, so will the value system’s appreciation for air and water. Consider taxes assessed against those who pollute air; pro-rate the cost of a bottle of water to a gallon of gasoline. See? It’s already underway.

Now, this has been the long way around, but I would offer that the thinking man, the man stripped to little-more than conscience, might well even exist without any of the above, or at least with a very Spartan amount, provided he had time.

To me, or in keeping with this theme, ‘for my money,’ there is no resource to be held of a higher value than time. Again, though it may be cumbersome, I’m going to take the time here to set aside a few misconstructions. The time I am referring to is not that silly little metronomic “tick-tocking” measure we associate with clocks. Throw everything you know about these out the window, from sundials to atomic clocks—gone. The clock, and all it measures for that matter, are just our own primitive ways of trying to track time, to wrap our heads around it. Likewise, all the ridiculous ways we think we are manipulating time, from a time-out to a time change—these are not what I am referencing at all.

It’s worth noting, however, that the money changers have been drooling over time for some time. Consider the humble parking meter, doling out time for coin. I would wager that every conceivable association has been made to making time commercial, from punishing people by restricting their time in jail to prolonging one’s lifetime through exuberantly overpriced medical practices.

Philosophers and historians have had a heyday with time, offering some truly mind-bending and unanswerable questions. Was there, for instance, time before history? Can there be a history of the future? One definition cites time as the future passing through the present into the past. Once I begin to dwell on all these things, I think I maybe chose the wrong major a couple decades ago. Addressing all that philosophizing is beyond me, here and now, but worth a mental bookmark.

I would simply suggest that time, maybe “lifetime,” to keep it manageable, is something taken for granted. I foresee it as becoming more and more the object of our corporate affection (and affectations) as the baby boomers bust. As I age, a byproduct of time, I realize the value of time more and more. Now that I have my own kids, that all seems to build compound interest for me. Time cannot be contained—I know this from my toe-dip into the time continuum, the philosophies of time, and the struggles I’ve had with time management. What one can do, however, is to “bend” time.

There are theories on the hard science of the reality of this, from worm holes to quarks, but I am using my own slang here when writing of bending time. You might call it nostalgia or reflection, meditation, scrapbooking or simply remembering. To me, to bend time is to be hyper-conscious of it. Then one can almost play out a moment in slow motion, view it from multiple angles, even stop action. I am, of course, making allusions to the film industry and DVD playback features. (An aside, but a good one—see Adam Sandler’s movie Click, for it is an entire movie toying with the bending of time, and it has a great message, too.) To bend time is to acknowledge it, then also to appreciate it. Take an intentional, forced “time-out” of your own volition. See time for what it is.

I am not recommending hallucinogenic drugs nor Salvidor Dali, here. There’s no need to strum a guitar, sing Kumbaya, or spark up the hookah here. Put the needle to some vinyl and put on an old cardigan sweater, for all I care. Sing Christmas medleys with Bing Crosby, if that works for you.

I am just urging us all (myself included) to “take some time” this holiday season, appreciate one-anothers’ presence as much as the presents. Take an extra picture or two, maybe have some family time to remember days-gone-by. At a personal level, I highly recommend a visit to futureme.org, where you can send yourself an email, to be delivered to yourself at some time you designate in the future.
Bend some time, sometime, and you’ll think you lived longer, at least for a moment.