In light of the mid-semester fiasco that unfolded a week ago, and the mental notes and self-promises that we silently muttered to ourselves knowing full well of their limited life expectancy, I thought I’d pen down a few words about two words (Refer title) that has managed to keep me motivated since it made its first imprint on my brain.
But given the freedom of space that exists on this particular blog, I take the liberty to take you through a pointless analogy.
My dearest reader, suppose you have a bank account. Not the SBI one that fines you for being poor. A bank account that pays you. Literally (Although hypothetically).
Every single day, the highly generous bank deposits a sum of 86,400$ in your account.
*drum rolls*
There is, however, a slight technicality. At the end of the day, your bank account is emptied. Whatever you did not spend that day, is taken away from you at midnight, as the account is refreshed. But, fret not, the benevolent and highly generous bank deposits another 86,400$ the very next day!
There are no other catches or clauses or asterisk conditions regarding how you utilize this amount. That is left to your dexterity and imagination, and of course priorities. (Read, Night Canteens.)
Seriously though – it’s an open canvas. You have the complete freedom of how you utilize this money. Would you like to invest it in purchasing things for yourself? So be it. For your friends and family or your better half? So be it. Or are you the kind that deals in gold bricks? That’s totally fine too. You’d try and spend the maximum of the amount you receive each day and get maximum benefit, trying to use every last penny for one thing or the other! You’d plan how you’re going to assimilate it into making a bigger spending, or how you’ll utilize it in the long term and how you’ll spend a portion of it for charity and what not!
But did you know, my dearest reader, that you are a proud owner of such a bank account?
The probability of you being an engineer is fairly high, so I’m assuming you’ve already figured out what I’m talking about by now from the number 86,400 itself and cut the drama.
TIME.
Every day, the bank of life fills your account with 86,400 seconds. You’re free to use each second of this however you wish to. You can invest it on yourself, your skills, your friends, your family. But at the end of the day, every second you wasted that day, every second you didn’t utilize as much as you should have, is taken away from you. It’s gone. Poof. Of course, you have the next set of 86,400 seconds, but what’s gone, is gone. Period.
Don’t you think that each second is more valuable than the same number in dollars? In this day and age, where banks collapse and billionaires take birth in the fractions of a second, our collective perspective of the value of time has undergone drastic changes. And even as unsuspecting college students, shielded from the harsh realities of the cut-throat corporate world, we often have glimpses of how the ability to manage time makes or breaks. It defines a person more than any other trait. Each extra hour that you are able to squeeze into productivity has a way of coming back to your benefit at one point or the other. And of course, the contrapositive to that statement holds true as well.
If you managed to make that extra effort to read the newspaper every morning, something which you intended when you paid 500 bucks for the semester, you would be a different person with a wider perspective and a more updated view of the world.
If you managed to spend an hour everyday on that coursera course, you would have another skill on your resume in a couple of weeks.
If you managed to go to the gym like you promised yourself over and over, you wouldn’t be fretting over the shape of you.
Carpe Diem, two words from a full-length line. “Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero”, said Horace, the Latin poet, urging you to seize the day! Use it to the fullest. Every person out there, each of those whom you idolize and want to emulate, has exactly the same of it as you. They are just those who understand the intricacies of how time is the most important dimension of them all.
Take up things you love. That you want to do. That excites you. Those which you think adds value to you. To your persona, to your being. Bother about your schedule later. Let there be chaos. Chaos is a ladder, or so a raven once said. Know how when to say yes, and make sure you say it, and more importantly, when to say no. It’s your second, and you only have 86,400 of it. Fill it with you.
Carpe Diem has been the work ethic of a handful of those who have managed to upturn the course of history. Some by brains, some by muscle.
But this article is not about them. It is about you. And without being hypocritical by consuming more of your 86,400, allow me to ask you this question. Will you be one to fade into oblivion as the sands of time slip away, or will you seize it by the neck and say CARPE DIEM!
The choice is yours, every morning.
– Govind Jeevan