Should Time be wasted?

As I laid down on my bed yesterday night, trying to find sleep which wasn't coming fast enough send me into some deep reflections on how things have come by. I was lying on my bed with my phone while pressing it and listening to music with earphones plugged into my ears. Since ASUU (Academic staff union of universities) has embarked on an academic strike for more than 100 days now, I wasn't doing much back at school since schools have been closed. ASUU comprises the academic staff or lecturers under a collective union that serves as their body. Hence matters relating to the collective welfare of lecturers are taken up by ASUU.

So while lying on the bed yesterday night, I could not but reminisced about how the federal government and ASUU themselves have wasted our time in the disguise of embarking on useless strikes much more to our detriment as students. It was in the light of this thought that I checked my phone and I saw that the time read 11:59 pm yesterday which was May 30, 2022. Initially, I wasn't much intrigued by the time specifically because it seems normal to me. I know that it's normal for the time to read up to such a level before we enter into another brand new day, but I noticed something right away. What I noticed was that once it read from 11:59 pm to 12:00 am, there is already a fresh day that has come up, and that yesterday was already gone then. Somehow I was thrilled to see my phone changed from "Monday" to "Tuesday" by the virtue of the change of just one minute. It dawned on me yesterday when the 11:59 pm changed to midnight that no matter what I do I can't go back to the 11:59 pm again. It's long gone forever. Time is like money spent that cannot be retrieved back.

Well, I begin to reason why time is a very important factor in human lives and some light dawned on me. I saw that almost every decision in life is based on timing. As a lady, you are expected to go to school early so that you may be "early" going into marriage. Many believed that it's beneficial to marry early or timely so that you can bear your children and take care of them when you are still at your best. This is to show that people value the concept of time and all they wish is that they are always on time for whatever they do.

As a student in Nigeria, you have to pass through a compulsory one year of service to the federal government through a program called NYSC ( National Youth service corps). The certificate given to you upon the completion of a one-year service helps you to get government jobs within the country. But you can only go to serve the one year if you are not more than 30 years of age. That's why students always want to graduate early to serve within the age frame but it's quite unfortunate that numerous industrial strikes upon strikes in our schools today robbed many of our graduates of such chance.

While some actions by others can cause time problems for some people like the one illustrated above, what about others who by their actions cause delays in their own lives. Many people are constantly wasting their own time. Is it good wasting the time you should be investing in yourself? You can't regain the time you lost already. Are you in the business of doing irrelevant things that can't take you far in life?

Time is precious and also priceless. You've got to spend it wisely, no one has a monopoly on time and you can't have all the time to yourself. I hope you reflect on that.