VI. How Time Gets Stolen

A practical observation. We guard our money from strangers. We hand our time to them freely.

You would never hand your money to a stranger without knowing who they were and what they intended to do with it. You would want to know if you would get it back. You guard your property carefully.

Now think about how you give away your time.

Someone asks for a morning. You give it. Someone wants an afternoon. Fine. Someone needs you for a project that runs for months. Of course. You hand these things over without a second thought, as if they cost nothing, as if you could always make more.

You cannot make more.

Still, people who would never lend money carelessly will give away years of their lives to anyone who asks. They will spend decade after decade on work they chose by accident, on relationships they fell into, on obligations they accepted without examining, on other people's priorities and goals.

Look at the people who seem most powerful, most admired, most busy. Listen to them when they are unguarded. You will hear a theme. You will hear them say, in one way or another, that they are not allowed to live their own life. That man who is surrounded by clients, whose opinion everyone wants, who cannot walk across a room without being stopped: he says it himself. I am not allowed to live.

Because all those people demanding his time are taking him away from himself. He allowed it. He allows it still. Every day that passes is gone.