Wednesday 24 March 2010

Time and Money

Time ... it can be there to kill ... or on your hands ... or to spare ... or of the essence ...

I had some extra this morning while I waited to wake up enough to walk Kenya for an hour up the log road till she bristled at raccoon tracks and sniffed the bear poo, and then around the lake throwing sticks to give her extra exercise. 

This is what I did with those extra minutes.

I tracked a $10 bill I had received in change a couple of days ago.  Someone had written a website on the bill and I followed it to learn that my $10 was in excellent condition when the writer received it August 3, 2007 in Grandora, Saskatchewan.  It had traveled 2,359 kilometres and gone from excellent to fair condition in the time it took to get to me. 

963 days, 13 hours, 54 minutes had elapsed since she sent it off on its journey.

I was the only person in the trail, so I was left to wonder how many hands touched that bill in the nearly 3 year period, and what they used that $10 for.

If you have some time and a Canadian bill of any denomination on/in your hands, you could check out the website and send a bill on its journey yourself.

www.cdn-money.com

Enjoy whatever time you have today.  It is crispy out there but not freezing except when the wind catches bare ears, and if you can find a sheltered spot in the sun it is practically basking weather, a good place to load up on the Vitamin D Canadians lack in the winter months.

3 comments:

Barbara Carlson said...

Wonder how long a bill will last once it's made out of plastic...

Denise & I fantasized about winning even $5 million.
Even... ha. We, too, would give a lot of it away. I am sure, tho, I would continued making pictures -- it's addictive to create. Gets me into a zen state, something money can't do.

"Time is NOT money -- Time is LIFE" A good motto.

Leonard Wibberley (author of The Mouse that Roared) said that part of our modern sickness/dissatisfaction/ depression is because we try to cram too much into a single hour so as not to "waste time".

He believes that in is itself an outrageous waste of time -- destroying it so that Time has no chance to make its presence felt. He wrote:

"Surely time is a lovely slow river, leisured, easy and serene. The happiest people are those who take this view, who are not rushed and who refuse to be rushed. We tend to approach time like starving men at a banquet. We eat our fill and are surprised that everything should be so tasteless."

When people ask me if I'm "busy", I always say "No,
I try not to be." A smug answer but I do explain why I don't like to be busy and rushed. I like a sense of space in the brain, the leisure to pay attention to my life as it passes.
(Physically decluttering one's surroundings helps a lot with this.)

Oma said...

Great comment ...

One of the things I love about retirement is the fact that we now have the luxury of allowing time to flow like a lazy river. When I begin to feel stressed by too much, I often take a step back, try to regroup, and attempt to get my priorities straight.

This sane state is only possible when you are in charge of your life ... when the world is not spinning you around. People who have enough and don't need a great deal seem best able to enter this pleasant state.

I too would continue to create funky furniture if I won ... for the same reasons you create your art ... but I wouldn't care a whit whether anything sold. In fact I am almost in that place now!

Barbara Carlson said...

Yeh, I'd give my work away -- for whatever they could pay. People like to give you something, even if it's not a lot.

Toulouse Latrec is said to have valued the money he got for one of his painting above all other sales. The poor dancer gave him the equivalent of few dollars, but it was all she had.