Time
kxj:
“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”—
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
So true.
…Actually, statements like this have always bothered me.
Our priorities have shifted since those people were at their prime (and we do not have the manly bodyguard nuns of Mother Teresa to do our chores for us). We—personally—have to be at a million places at once… at the latest meeting between world leaders, the site of Lindsay Lohan’s next traffic incident, the next act of aggression from warmakers and terrorists, and in time to wish a friend on the other side of the world a happy birthday. We are constantly flooded by media and are always floundering against the current in an attempt to stay afloat. Because that is just what is expected of a worldly, informed individual.
The great minds of the past could wake up in the morning and write down everything they wanted to complete in a day on a simple list… and complete it by the end of the day. Today, it would take us the whole day to fill that list, and we go to sleep realizing we’ve forgotten something.
So yes, we have the same number of hours as Leonardo da Vinci, but we live in a different time. We are also NOT those people… they were brilliant and we are normal. If we had lived in their time, we would still not be them.
Or perhaps this xkcd comic will illustrate my point better.
