The Widow's Two Minutes or, Why People Value Their Time More Than Their Money

Ye have heard it said, time is money. But verily, verily I say unto you, that if ye were given all the money in the world, ye would still hunger for time. For what shall it profit a man if he gains a whole lotta cash, and loses his Casio F-91W?

I'm not so sure what I'm saying, and to be honest, the title is what it is mostly for the pun, which isn't even that great. I suppose I've just been thinking a lot about time and about how we value it, more so than in that famous saying. And that saying's meaning would be that, appealing to basic common sense, idleness is a total waste because you could have otherwise spent that time productively, and thus you would have gotten something out of it. In a way it's not so much about the very real and pragmatic stoppage of a factory due to some problem, it's also about the truth that everyday you spend without working is a day that will inevitably decrease your productivity in bulk, or it will cause you to complete the finished product later on than you would have otherwise, or it's quite simply wasted time. Because again, time is money. The two are inherently intertwined and with good reason, because money is nothing more than a fictitious but useful numeric value we attribute to human works, and time is the thing we all inevitably use to create those works. And yet I've come to wonder if at the end of the day we value time far more, because while we can recuperate lost money somewhat, we can never recuperate lost time. Thus, asking people for their time might be more than the vain euphemism of telemarketers and street preachers.

“O Óbolo da Viúva” by João Zeferino da Costa

This entire discussion might be subjective right off the bat. Because while sixty coins will always be sixty coins, sixty minutes to one person might be different than sixty minutes to another. We have to consider that some people are simply more busy than others, they have different jobs with more or less responsibility, bigger or smaller families, and so on, but recently I can't shake the feeling that everyone is so unrealistically busy... Nowadays we have powerful computers in our pockets at all times, those computers have a constant internet connection, and people can't seem to take their eyes off them for a second. So why is everyone so busy that they can't reply to emails or other messages? Let him who never ghosted cast the first stone, I guess... It's just strange that so many of us, in having fairly normal lives, also seem busier than the busiest busy bee. If people are at home they likely don't wanna invest their free time in things they would consider a chore, even if it would be something that others consider highly important. For instance, if you are a staunch defender of a cause, whether it be a religious one, or sociological, ecological, scientific, or the like, you might be further inclined to ask people for their time since you can't even expect to get their money before they see the world the same way you do. At times we don't exactly want people's money at all, no, at times we want their time, we want them to take five or ten minutes aside to read or watch something important. It should be an easy thing to do, and yet I'm under the impression that, at a certain point, outright asking for money might yield a more immediate and fruitful response.

Wastes of money also seem weirdly similar to wastes of time, that is to say they are both totally subjective. I remember a few years back when I'd hang out with friends at the mall and, when going to the shops, I'd often purchase a couple of books, a transaction my friends beheld with a distinct disappointment at seeing all my money go to a total and complete waste. But then we'd go to a clothing store and I'd be the one befuddled at watching them spend a good thirty dollars on a pair of pants seemingly identical to the pair they currently had on. It was just pointless, quite the communication breakdown indeed. And this kind of thing extends itself everywhere and to everything. People who love video games, for example, see them as proper art, as something great and simply well worth it, whereas people who hate them see them as a hopeless waste of money, and of course, time. Same thing with books and fashion, as per my example, as well as movies, sports, traveling, fancy food, clubbing, and whatever else people do these days. It seems to be the case that, whenever we like and value something, we understand and appreciate the investment others put into it, but whenever we don't like or don't value that something, we find it all so pointless that it's almost surreal to watch people actively pursue it. I'm not sure what I'm saying here, if anything, but I think the point is that, while we greatly value both time and money, I wouldn't say it's entirely unreasonable to assume that, if we had a ton of money, we might willingly spend it on stupid stuff. But sadly, time is forever limited, almost more so than money...

Just how easy is it to ask people for a moment of their time? Not very it seems to me. We live in a time when most of us, myself included, spend a whole lot of time procrastinating with silly internet stuff, but then when we consider all the actual productive work we should be doing, we suddenly feel overwhelmed. Eventually, messages get left on read, emails go unanswered, debates and documentaries we were asked to watch go unwatched, and more importantly for me, books and articles we were asked to read go unread. It then begs the question – are people seriously that busy? The answer is no. It can't possibly be true, at least not technically. And I for one have watched The Sopranos enough times to know that whenever people claim to not have enough money they are always, always lying. If someone owes you money, promises to pay on saturday and doesn't pay, then unless they died of starvation during the week they are simply lying to you. Because if they remained alive for the entire week, that means they bought food, or if not, then someone bought it for them. They are getting their money from somewhere, so the reason mobsters play tough is to make sure their debtors are reminded to make paying the debt a priority. Otherwise they never would and never will. And thus, priority is the key issue here. It's not so much that people don't “have” free time, it's that whenever they do they don't see what is asked of them as a priority. Being busy is a state of mind.

So no, sorry to say but, in all likelihood, she isn't busy, dude. She isn't away from her phone due to this or that, there are no possible excuses. What's happening is that she's trying to politely ghost you... If she wasn't she'd find the time. It's that simple. And I paint that particular picture because it's an easy one to understand, as sad things often are. There are twenty-four hours in a day to all of us, and while some of us have more immediate obligations than others, the truth is also that, when we truly care, we find the time. No person is too busy to look into an important issue, or to engage in a little street conversation about it, or to read an internet article, or to quite simply give a damn. Because in all likelihood, that same person who claims to be busy, though he or she makes the claim with complete honesty, also spends hours watching random YouTube videos, precisely as I did just before forcing myself to continue writing this article. It's just not factually true that we are all that busy, it's only true that we either don't care enough, or have immediately forgotten all about it, or that we'd rather do a million things before doing the thing that was asked of us.

Still, people are obviously and wholly entitled to their time. I'm certainly not arguing that people should be made to donate their time, I am just wondering about how strange it is to hear people call themselves busy in one breath, but then in the very next one they sigh about how on the day before they did absolutely nothing. I suppose everyone is entitled to a day of rest as well, or even to a day dedicated to lethargic nothingness, something of which I am quite guilty, but they aren't entitled to claim they are busy and swamped when in reality they just would rather not do that which is asked of them, or perhaps in all that lethargy they lack the motivation for it, something of which I am also guilty. And if you ever searched for people's time so as to get their ear about whatever problem or cause you are passionate about, then you definitely know what I mean. It's oddly frustrating to be absolutely convinced that you are in possession of something important or interesting, something that people would greatly value knowing if they took the time to discover it, and yet you can't get them to care... But maybe it could be that, when they fail to give you some of their time, asking for a lot of their money instead might make them weirdly more receptive. And the fact that I'm only now realizing this paradoxically simple and strange connection between time and money is the reason why I wouldn't have made it in marketing, nor would I have made it as a beggar, which, all things considered, is what I am, let's face it... That is unless you took the time to read this whole article, as well as others I've written, in which case you have already given me something more valuable than money.

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