Home is Where Value Is
I don’t have time.
We’ve run out of time.
She doesn’t have time for the kids.
There’s always enough time. We say we don’t have time because of jaundiced time management, which overlooks the fact we have only 24 hours to work with. We have chemists/drugstores and entertainment parlors with the sign OPEN 24 HOURS, but that does not stretch time.
We seldom question how we allocate time until we have too much of it, like our present precarious state inside the COVID-19 blimp. We are floating over mountains, oceans and jungles full of lions and leopards, waiting for air traffic control to give us authority to land.
Prisoners are already on solid ground. They are experts on time, too much time to be precise. ‘He’s doing time’ in lockdown speech, which is a combination of the sentence the judge handed down and all the time in jail, doing nothing. Correctional services will dispute that. They will say inmates always have something to do and will produce 24-hour timetables to prove it.
Time has a value and it is subjective. What is valuable to Peter might not be, to Paul. We place a value on people or activities and it decides how we fill the 24 hours and where we spend them.
COVID-19 sealed off the where. We have no access at all. There are barricades, ‘temporarily closed’ signs and even old school padlocks on doors, which brings us back to time. It is still 24 hours, despite the 8 hours that are now dormant.
We are home, but sit in front of computer screens and other devices filling the void created by the virus. We are frustrated because we are spending time in a space with little value.
It worked seamlessly when we went to the office, workshop, our store at the mall, pub and sports arena, places we value. If something is of no value, we don’t waste time on it. We place very little value on the home, that is why we spend the bulk of the 24 hours outside.
COVID-19 has turned the tables. It is forcing us to allocate value to the space called home, its occupants and activities. Failure to do so will result in surplus time, which might lead to irreparable mental damage.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
We’ve run out of time.
She doesn’t have time for the kids.
There’s always enough time. We say we don’t have time because of jaundiced time management, which overlooks the fact we have only 24 hours to work with. We have chemists/drugstores and entertainment parlors with the sign OPEN 24 HOURS, but that does not stretch time.Prisoners are already on solid ground. They are experts on time, too much time to be precise. ‘He’s doing time’ in lockdown speech, which is a combination of the sentence the judge handed down and all the time in jail, doing nothing. Correctional services will dispute that. They will say inmates always have something to do and will produce 24-hour timetables to prove it.
Time has a value and it is subjective. What is valuable to Peter might not be, to Paul. We place a value on people or activities and it decides how we fill the 24 hours and where we spend them.
COVID-19 sealed off the where. We have no access at all. There are barricades, ‘temporarily closed’ signs and even old school padlocks on doors, which brings us back to time. It is still 24 hours, despite the 8 hours that are now dormant.We are home, but sit in front of computer screens and other devices filling the void created by the virus. We are frustrated because we are spending time in a space with little value.
It worked seamlessly when we went to the office, workshop, our store at the mall, pub and sports arena, places we value. If something is of no value, we don’t waste time on it. We place very little value on the home, that is why we spend the bulk of the 24 hours outside.
COVID-19 has turned the tables. It is forcing us to allocate value to the space called home, its occupants and activities. Failure to do so will result in surplus time, which might lead to irreparable mental damage.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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