Anyone can give a gift. A token of affection or a meaningless bauble. But to give your time, now that truly is priceless. Time is something that is incalculable. Society may put a price tag on your time such as in the workplace, but wages earned is merely a means of survival this day and age. Every trinket ever given to me has value not because of the price tag attached to it, but because of the person attached to it. That person worked and earned a wage to gift me something. You see, it was their time that they put in that ultimately paid for their gift. Truth be told, I am just as touched by a warm embrace and a moment of laughter as I am a token. Time. Something so simple can bear so much meaning.
My time is precious, because I know that what I give is something that I can never get back. When such a gift is returned, my heart smiles. When we give each other our time, whether it be helping with a chore of some sort or simply hanging out watching a movie or talking over coffee, we are trading time, pieces of our lives that will never come back to us and have been traded in for a moment in our lives as memories. This is an amazing gift to give one another indeed. And the more effort put into use of that time adds more value to an already invaluable entity. To me, this is colossal.
Think about it; if you had a certain amount of gold coins that could only be spent and never regained, you would spend them wisely. You would cherish every single doubloon. Only things vital to your life would be worth spending on. Now stay with me; your time is worth more than said doubloons and how it is spent is entirely up to you. Should you choose to bestow some of that precious treasure upon another person, know that what you are giving is permanent as is what they are giving you in return.
I can be quite selfish with my time. In my quest for personal growth I have made it a point to work on this flaw, but not to the point that I have no time left for myself. I try to give my time to those that wish to give their time to me. And believe me, I am truly honored to receive such gifts from my friends and loved ones. However, I still take out time to sing and dance and draw and write and even nap. These moments are precious to me because I'm giving to myself of myself. My time is something that I deserve as well. But I am no longer exasperated at invitations or social engagements because I realized that a person that I care about wants to give me something. Time. They wish to gift me some of their life. And how foolish would I be to refuse such a treasure. I have come to realize that it is not only my time that is precious.
