Are you rich or poor? An easy way to tell

As you read this sentence, my friends, imagine that you have exactly 24 hours left to live - and not one minute more.

Would your time suddenly become more precious to you?

Well … it shouldn’t.

Your time should already be that precious to you.

You should already be doing exactly those things that suddenly became so important to you in your mind - when you thought you had only 24 hours to live.

The fact is, we all have the exact same amount of time in each day. We all have only 24 hours - and not one minute more. Regardless of how great may be our material wealth or social status, none of us can beg, borrow, or steal for even one second more.

Blessed are they among us who realize the truth; our real wealth is found in How We Spend Our Time.

To each our own, as to how we spend - or one might even say, “invest” - our time.

A friend said to me a couple of weeks back, “Ben, with your creative mind and endless energy, you could have had a career that made you a lot more money than teaching did. Then you could have had the time to do absolutely anything you wanted to do in all the world in your old age.”

I looked at my friend and replied, “I already do absolutely anything I want to do right now. I walk in nature. I babysit my grandchildren. I do community service. I stay in touch with friends and former students. I try to help people daily in some meaningful way. If I had all the money in the world, I can’t think of a single thing I’d be doing differently right now with my time.”

As I daily live my life, I strive to weigh each “time opportunity cost” in my mind. (By “time opportunity cost” I mean that when I am doing one thing, it is costing me time that I could be doing something else.) I feel this type of time awareness empowers me to enrich my life greatly, allowing me to better realize when I am suddenly spending my time on things that don’t matter much to me.

Consider joining me, my friends, in keeping a more “mindful moment-by-moment awareness” of how we are spending our precious time each day.

When people have the courage to do such a thing, they are sometimes surprised (and even horrified) to realize that they are literally “frittering” away much of their life on virtually meaningless activities;

arguing with friends and family,

pouting about slights,

plotting revenge,

daydreaming about how life could be instead of how it is,

envying other people,

worrying about problems,

playing the martyr role -

the list is endless.

We each need to be honest and ask ourselves, “What brings the most meaning and joy to my life?”

Then we need to figure out ways to spend as much of our time as we possibly can doing exactly those things.

Count yourself rich or poor, my friends - not by your material wealth, but by how you spend your time.

Fritter your life away doing meaningless things - and you can justifiably call yourself poor.

Spend your alloted time on this Earth doing things that are meaningful to you - and no one alive can rightly claim to be richer.