Time

This morning my 6 year old looked at the calendar and stated, "it's February 26, yeah, only 2 more days til the end of February." I was wondering what all of the excitement was about but before I could ask, the child suddenly stopped and blurted, "wow, February went by fast!" I was surprised to hear a 6 year old make such an observation for this certainly seemed true. As I look around at the leftover Valentine candy, has it really been 2 weeks already? Where did the time go? Well, time does fly when you are having fun and it can take a dreadfully long time when you are not. We are not having fun, why is it flying?

If you believe in the Bible, one of the harbingers of end times is that time speeds up, days rapidly turn into nights and so on. The new end times schedule is 12.21.12, the winter solstice, three years hence, when the Mayan calendar predicts the current era will end. Some interpret this to mean that the world will end. Others believe it just means the current astrological cycle that we are in is over and civilization will then been governed by the next astrological sign for how many thousands of years and so on. Many early civilizations that did mathematical calculations studied astrology which was the springboard for their well-documented numerical observations so I think the astrological cycle definitions seems most likely. Nevertheless, the drama of the end days is always percolating.

Time is going to keep ticking regardless of what we choose to do with it so the logic is that we should do something useful with it. No matter how long it takes to accomplish a task, if it is a useful task, it will come to a close, there is a light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to. It doesn't matter how long it takes to get a new degree or whether you will be 50 when you complete it, you should go for it if that is really what you want to do. Then when you are 50 you will be exactly where you want to be and better off for having followed your dream.

It has been almost 3 months since I was laid off. Unemployment does makes you take stock of time. You do not want to be perceived as being lazy while your spouse or partner is now working harder than ever to preserve their job otherwise your family finances are kaput. Yet, you realize that if you were a salaried worker, New York State weekly unemployment benefits of $405 are the equivalent of working $12/hr full-time, before taxes (of course you have to pay taxes on those benefits down the road further eroding the actual hourly figure). Why should anyone go back to work for anything less than $12/hr in NY unless you are above this break-even point?

This is why, I think in addition to extended unemployment benefits, the government should keep people busy by giving them productivity credits when they volunteer or give back to the community. These credits can be redeemed for either tax credits, a tax-free income reward based on number of credits earned or be converted into extra weeks of unemployment benefits. This way there would be a free and willing workforce who could accomplish so much in our communities. We have the time and the government is giving us the money anyway. Why not get back something in return and pass on these values to the next generation?