Time is the one asset in which every other variable is dependent.
If your time runs out, what else is left?
When I was in Thailand five years ago, I decided that it would be fun to learn how to cook traditional Thai meals. We were in Krabi – a town with no motor vehicles, where 500 foot rocks outcropped from the ocean on the shore, and were strewn about the coastline. The boat came early that morning – their traditional boats are similar to large canoes with heavy diesel engines powering the motor on the back. The boatmen rarely spoke English and in most cases, the engine dies several times on one trip. Trust is fundamental for travel.
Eventually, a large pier rose up from the water and we climbed the stairs and walked down the long path toward a man gesturing for us to get in a white unmarked van. After several miles of twists and turns on the unpaved road, I remember wondering to myself if I really wanted to learn Thai cooking this badly. Or, if I was ever going to return alive to prepare these meals for anyone back in the U.S.
Finally, we arrived to the most beautiful Thai Cooking School. My friend and I were the only people in the class that day, and we were fortunate enough to learn the beauty of cooking with vegetables and herbs that were freshly grown and organically cultivated on the property. Ya, the instructor, was fabulous and I will never forget her commands for putting more, “SHOOK, SHOOK” (fish sauce) in everything we made.
As our time was coming to a close, she spoke of her dream to house women and hold retreats in her home. She drove us to her house and we helped her put together some literature in English of what she hoped to accomplish so that she could advertise to tourists. She spoke of how lucky she was to have been able to accomplish what she had with her cooking school. She explained to us that she considered herself fortunate and she wanted to give back by providing a center for women.
She struggled to explain the difference between being well-off and wealthy. And then she took a moment to differentiate between being rich and being fortunate. It was there that I heard words that changed my life forever. In broken English, she uttered:
“No matter how much money you have, we all get same time. I be mad if the rich got more time. But they don’t. We all have same time, no matter what.”
The impact of these words was immeasurable. I had spent the majority of my life affiliated with affluent people, and the one major component that they all failed to grasp was how very precious and dear their time was. There, in the middle of Thailand, I realized for the very first time in my life how important it was to me.
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