Do you remember the days when people would keep paper calendars and write down their next meetings and appointments? A couple years ago I was doing that myself and I used to use a wall calendar to keep track of my life. However as time went by I was finding it harder and more of a challenge to stay on top of all my commitments and obligations, until one day I had an epiphany and I decided to switch to a digital calendar which I can access from both my phone and computer, and I started using Google Calendar.
All of a sudden I am getting reminders before my appointments, both an hour before and a day before, and each morning I get an automated email with my entire schedule for the day (plus my wife’s schedule too). To top it off Google calendar syncs and includes a Hebrew Calendar and recently I was able to sync my calendar with the calendar of events on chabadsudbury.com.and since then I luckily haven’t forgotten about any events at our center.
Life has definitely gotten easier since then and I feel I can accomplish a lot more and have more control over my time and responsibilities. I find that I can now cram in more appointments, stay on top of my errands and responsibilities, and change times of meetings without messing up the look of the page.
Time is one of the greatest gifts that we have but one that we sometimes underestimate in its value. Before we even have a chance to think we end up spending a third of our life sleeping, another sixth eating, and the remaining half taking care of our family and loved ones, working, exercising, learning, praying and taking care of our many other pursuits.
In 2012 Superbowl Ads went for $3.5 million for a short thirty second slot. Companies and businesses paid millions of dollars for a mere thirty seconds of exposure on Prime Time TV because they realized that 30 seconds may be just a short moment in time, but the impact of the commercial may be unbelievable due to the size of the audience and the audiences attention to the ads. I am sure that these same companies wouldn’t pay even a tenth of the price for two minutes on the 4am slot, for the simple reason that there are so few people tuning in and watching during those hours. In other words, 30 seconds can be worth their weight in gold, or fly by in an instant never to be remembered again.
In this week’s portion we read about the last throes of the Egyptian exile and the first moments of freedom for the Jews. As the Jews were freed from bondage they also received their very first commandment from G-d, to count time. The Jews ceased having Egyptian taskmasters over their heads and controlling their lives and were finally beginning to feel free and breathe the winds of freedom, yet were immediately told that they shouldn’t just let time slip away, rather they should begin counting time through the months and days and living by a Jewish Calendar.
You would think that after so many years of slavery they should be given a break and be allowed to relax at the sand of the Red Sea or the Mediterranean before they are put back to work in any way. Yet this was not to be, as G-d had a message that he wanted to convey to them, being free is not just to not be a slave, rather being free means that you have control over your own time and destiny, and you have the ability to use your time in the correct manner and imbue it with meaning and value.
They say that Benjamin Franklin once told a young tradesman that “time is money”, yet hey forgot to mention that sometimes that money might be your bosses money. People say if you want to calculate your value, then you should divide your annual income by 8,760 to get a per-hour value of your time over the year. Ultimately however, even if we come up with a good average per hour, whatever the total we come up with would still belittle the true value of time, as inherently each moment of time is priceless and infinite in its value and potential. It’s true that each moment of time may not feel like a Superbowl ad moment and worth spending all our resources on, nevertheless from a spiritual perspective that moment of time is potentially and actually worth more than the Superbowl ad time slot. In the words of the sages, “better one moment of good deeds in this world, that all the world to come”. In other words, one moment of good deeds and meaning is worth even more than all the spiritual benefits that we get from those actions.
This does not mean that every moment of life is spent praying, studying and doing Mitzvos, rather every moment in life can be lived with a deeper consciousness of who we are and what are our goals, and as we keep that deeper spiritual purpose in our mind, in turn our encounters and moments in life will be meaningful and have lasting impact.
In my line of work I meet many people of different ages and backgrounds, and I always find it so powerfully profound when I hear about an emotion or happy moment that they have as they think about a quality moment earlier on in life. When I meet an elderly person in a nursing home whose eyes tell you that they are thinking back 80 or 90 years and they give you this deep smile and tell you about a memory of sitting on their father’s lap during dinner time, you realize the priceless value of individual moments and the unbelievable and eternal impact that they have. Each moment is there only once and each moment can be used to create loving and meaningful moments for our children and loved ones and each moment is eternal in what we can accomplish with G-d our creator.
I will end off with a quote from Tzvi Freeman “People talk about “wasting time,” or even about “killing time.” Neither term is accurate. Time awaits you to give it life. A moment flashes into existence, anticipating your breath of life. After all, for this purpose you came here, to be at this time, in this moment, so that you will make it a living moment, a moment that has meaning, and a meaning connected to the One who created time itself.”
Good luck with your time.
Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel