DAY 90 – MAXIMIZING OUR EFFORTS (TIME GOES BY NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO)

When I was younger I was lazy. I would hang out with my friends and would seldom do anything that was productive or beneficial for myself. In my junior year in high school my parents became friends with a couple who owned a local art gallery. They gave me a job that at first I was reluctant to accept. Taking this job was the best decision I had ever made. It changed the course of my life.

As I was learning about my job at the gallery I was also learning more about art. The owners of the store would have paintings displayed at their store with the artists often coming into the store who I often talked to. There would be art lessons given twice a month by some of these artists that I attended as part of my job. I began to find all of this interesting. Within two months of being there I new that I also wanted to become an artist.

I started to read about famous artists including the type of art they had painted. I would read art books in order to gain more insights into the different styles of art. My mind would constantly focus upon the inner depths of art that transformed itself over the years into thinking about life more intently. By the time I graduated high school I understood that time goes by no matter what I do and I need to use it wisely with a specific end in sight.

It is now the twentieth anniversary of my first day working at the art gallery. I not only have my own art gallery but I also became a distinguished artist with exhibits around the world. I spend my time enthusiastically creating paintings that I am passionate about that other people enjoy and giving art lessons to young people in city after city.

While not everyone will become an artist that has some notoriety, there is something each and every human being enjoys doing. It is here that each of us needs to spend some of our time maximizing one’s efforts in order to become more proficient and productive at what we do.

Creating a better life for oneself and creating a collectively better world for all of us is no different than becoming better at what you enjoy doing. Time and effort has to go into it because a better personal life and a better collective world will not automatically happen. There has never been a personal or societal problem that is successfully resolved that doesn’t require thinking about it, trying to find a solution for it and then taking the necessary steps to remedy it. Maximizing our efforts instead of unproductive and non-beneficial use of our time is essential if we are to create something that is better than what we presently have.

I now realize that time is a precious resource that should not be wasted. Moments in everyone’s life go by irrespective of what I or anyone else does and by setting aside time to raise my consciousness and to engage in endeavors that are both beneficial for myself and humanity, I will be effectively using this resource called time.