I recently began an essay with the definition of the word “immigrant.”
I’m going to begin this blog post with a definition, albeit not the same one.
Time. Time is primarily defined by the dictionary on my school-issued Mac as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”
When someone says, “I need more time,” they do not literally mean that they need more of the indefinite continued progress of existence. What they usually are referring to is the dictionary-app’s third definition of time, which is "time as allotted, available, or used.”
We need more time is (sadly) something that is said far too often in rehearsal for the musical at my high school. We cannot, however, have more of the continued progress of existence, and we also cannot have more time set aside to rehearse. When I questioned as to why this was, I was greeted with an answer that had something to do with the fact that we couldn’t rehearse during the summer. To me, the answer seemed simple: push the play back a few weeks in order to give us more time to rehearse. For reasons having to do with holidays and people who make decisions for schools, this plan wasn’t put into action.
Some people are planners. (e.g. the people who make decisions for schools). They set specific times (second definition: a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon) for everything they do, even counting to the second as to not throw their day into chaos.
My cousin has a professor who begins walking to the podium at the front of the class exactly twenty seconds before 10:15 am (when the class is scheduled to begin). If students aren’t in their seats by the time she reaches the podium, they are to leave. Her TAs are like guards, making sure no student comes into the class who wasn’t present at the given minute (or, in this case, second).
My aunt reached the JFK airport at some amount of time that is represented in minutes by a number greater than 60. For those of you so uneducated as to not be familiar with the specific rules of the John F. (which, as it turns out, stands for Fitzgerald) Kennedy International Airport, one must arrive at exactly one hour before the time of their flight departure (or boarding time, or something like that). (I’m joking of course; I do not expect you to know the policies of that particular airport, nor would I be offended if you happened to.) Anyway, by the time my aunt got through the horrendous security line, it was, you guessed it folks, 59 minutes before whatever that particular time was before which she needed to arrive 60 minutes. Because of this strict time rule, my aunt was not allowed through security, and something happened along the lines of she-missed-her-flight-and-had-to-go-to-the-trouble-of-booking-a-new-one-oh-bother. Or something like that.
Time is also important in my life. Although I am not a super-planner (I rarely plan even a week in advance), I participate in many activities which take up time. For instance, I have rehearsal every day after school (which ends at 2:25, 1:45 on Mondays) until 6:00 pm, possibly before. On top of that, I started taking dance classes, which are about a 30 minute drive away, as well as a new theatre class, also 30 minutes away, each of which are from one to two hours long. On top of those, I also have the general high school homework load of endless biology reading and math assignments, with the occasional essay or memorized speech.
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| What I sometimes look like after a day filled with filled time. |
I very much enjoy doing all of these things. There was a time (ha) not too long ago that I did activities that I did not particularly enjoy. They were fine; however, they were not my PASSION/I didn’t have any passion in doing them. Passion is, as they say, a whole nother (dear FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT nother is not a word) corn grove (well, actually, I’m fairly certain that I made that one up, and that no one, or at least almost no one, has said that ever in the history of the world.)(Wait a second. Does corn not even grow in groves?! That's trees, gah. Cornfield.) Point being, I used time for things I didn’t like. Now I use time for things that I do like. Everything is much more fun. Shocker!
Even though I enjoy all of the things that I use time to pursue, sometimes I feel a bit… stressed out. I cannot, for whatever reason, get more time; I can only use less time to do things that I like in order to dedicate more time to things that need to be done, such as homework, that I don’t necessarily like, but I also don’t necessarily dislike. This is a constant dilemma. At this point in time (wow, I’m good), I’ve decided to just stick with the stuff, because I’d rather be doing lots of things that I like and also have to do some things that I don’t like than be doing some things that I like and also have to do some things that I don’t like and then have some time where I’m not doing anything at all.
If that makes any sense.
So, just to summarize...
1. Time is important.
2. Don’t use time to do things you don’t like.
3. Do use time to do things you do like.
4. Eat ice cream when you want it, even if it’s late and the ice cream has caffeine in it because it’s coffee ice cream.
5. Carpe diem ^^^ (or night, depending on what time 'tis)
6. Wait, what?
7. Never mind; I was just testing you.
8. Oh, okay.
9. Get to JFK International Airport more that 1 hour prior to whatever the time is to which you need to be 1 hour prior.
10. Stress isn’t always bad, it’s just a side effect of using time to do many things that you like.
11. In conclusion, do whatever you want, as long as you have time (and it doesn’t negatively affect anyone else), because there is only so much time anyway, so why spend the time in which you could be doing things you enjoy to do things you don’t enjoy that you don’t have to do.
Today has been a day of wordy explanations. I could talk about time for all time. Maybe I'll do a Part II sometime.
Anyway.
Ciao.
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