2023-06-14 14:20:00
A popular phrase assures that the most valuable thing that a person can give you is their time; Some even say that in this life what is truly important is the time we share with those we love.
For the former president of Uruguay, Pepe Mujica, in this current consumer society, they make us live a mad race for happiness, associated with acquiring products that we do not need. And in this race, more than money, what we waste is our time, which we consume indiscriminately to obtain monetary income over and over again.
The English are famous for their punctuality. For others it is gold, especially for economists and people of science. Time determines our lives as social beings, so why do some people consider it opportune to use it, steal it or rather misuse it?
Examples exist and are countless. They go from a huge queue because someone does not do their job correctly, going through procedures delayed by the bureaucracy. Whatever the reason, they always leave us with the same feeling of frustration.
Another great waste of time is usually those endless meetings where the planned program is not respected or the person who has made an appointment arrives late. In these long meetings, boredom and lack of interest in what they try to communicate to us at length always wins.
There are even those who, abusing the time of others, make appointments up to an hour in advance, so that nobody is late, a strategy that, far from working, ends up later affecting those who are punctual, those who must wait minutes in advance, and many others for the late ones
Then a doubt arises. Do they make us children of late arrivals? Are we a society without precision? To those who use this method, I tell you that they only make tardiness look like something habitual. Perhaps as a culture, we should associate good manners with punctuality.
I remember that in my first year at the University, my Print Journalism teacher marked the precise arrival of a meeting with a source as something unwavering; if something happened, it was our duty to communicate with that person, even though not all of us had cell phones back then. Even the teachers were only expected 15 minutes, we could leave the classroom, without any problem.
Beyond achieving the desired punctuality, those who quote before only make the problem worse; next time you will surely not come in the agreed period.
Punctuality is something distinctive of each person. There are those who, beyond strategies, are always late; for those there is no remedy and yes, a thousand justifications.
But for those of us who have discipline and respect as a hallmark of arriving on time, these early appointments are unacceptable. Valuing the time of others as much as your own is an act of empathy, of putting ourselves in the other’s place, of understanding that the existence of others does not belong to us.
#Wasting #time #option