The co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs says this, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs previously served as CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and is now a member of the Walt Disney Company’s Board of Directors – he seems to successfully handle the hours.
The trappings of time can be a formidable opponent or a cherished friend. The hours of life can be spent:
- waiting for a loved one to return from war
- hoping that a new job will come your way
- enjoying the birth of a first child
- enduring the loneliness of a dark night
- reveling in successful conquest at work
In all these scenarios the hours are there – to embrace or despise. Virginia Woolf’s character in the movie The Hours says this, “Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.” These hours that are between us – between us and triumph, death, defeat, or results – can weigh us down like a mighty ocean wave that so easily engulfs the weak. The entrapment of the hours can be avoided if we choose to face the hours differently. As Jobs’ says, your time is limited; you can not take waste it in paralyzing analysis or waiting out the inevitable with denial.
Time is what we choose to take on today. The truth of the past can be hard to swallow and the unseen future frustrates and paralyzes the present. But life is just life and the time that makes it up is just a piece of the puzzle that we analytically try to understand. We may end up on a bed of roses or a bed of glass – but either scenario is unpredictable and unavoidable. In the end some die to live and others live to die. How the outlook of people can be so opposing is beyond basic comprehension. If you pray for tomorrow to be better or revel in the sweet aromas of the distant past, you will miss the best of today. Our outlook can vary as much as the tide, but there will always be the hours and how you live in them only you can decide.