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| Image by Nile from Pixabay |
I came across video footages of a man sharing some eye-opening truths.
Here's one about watching sports:
Does it make sense to be cheering for people who don't know you... in a game that doesn't matter ... while you can't pay your light bill, you can't educate your children the way you want and you can't take a family vacation? But you are jumping up and down cheering for people you don't know...
It doesn't make sense for a broke person to watch a sports game - how can you watch someone win when you're losing? Unless you are studying how to win. And then you're delusional to call all those people on that team 'your' team... They might be your team, but you ain't 'their' team...
You're broke and watch somebody play get paid for playing a game... You are broke and trying to figure out how to pay your life bill... but you're getting excited because your team won? No, you are making your team lose because you're real team is your family.
And here's one about about watching movies:
You're broke and you're watching a movie.. you are watching people who are rich pretend to be people who don't exist... to distract you from intention in your life... from making your family's life better for generations... You're watching fake people live fake lives to create real feelings in you that anesthetize you from the fact that your life isn't working.
Spot on, right?
And you can easily replace sports and movies with other content or activities like streaming, shows, social media posts, etc. - anything that distracts you or keeps you away from the things that you are supposed to do in your life with utmost priority. He advocates being hyper-focused on intentions, instead of distractions.
I tried to research who the man is and his name is Myron Golden. Interesting nuggets of wisdom. And he did say that when you can afford to (e.g. you're not broke anymore), you can watch and do these activities if you want to.
But I was thinking - even if you are not broke, it would be great to continue pursuing purposeful activities and being intentional (most of the time... and with occasional bouts of spontaneity). Case in point - for more than a year now, I've deactivated my Netflix account. Since then, I had more time to pray and to go to Holy Mass on ordinary days (I am work in progress .. still a long way to go, but God is patient!), to reflect, to connect with others, to walk in the park, to listen to podcasts about topics I want to learn about, and to cross off personal tasks that have been on my list for a long while, among many other things.
When you allow distractions to consume much time in your life - that is real time taken away from your life that you will never gain back. A movie could easily take away 2 to 3 precious hours, and doing a tv series marathon could easily take away 12 to 24 precious hours (or even more) from your life which you would never be able to recover - no matter what. Been there, done that.
More than a decade ago, I played a virtual game - spent hours virtually planting crops and harvesting. Real time spent but no real vegetables & fruits to harvest. Isn't that ridiculous? And to think it is not even hard or expensive to plant (e.g. herbs). Of course, while I was into the game, I didn't realize how ridiculous it was. To borrow the term by Golden, I was anesthetized! Why not spend time planting real plants so you'll have something real to harvest and eat? If you're curious what jolted me to wake up, here's my old blogpost.
Just to reiterate one final time - time wasted is permanent loss. Unlike lost money which you can possibly gain back with effort, or health which, with proper discipline & care, could be recoverable, time is the only form of wealth that can never be regained.
