This Means You

There are certain things one would think were almost included in the Twelve Labors of Hercules, but in fact are extremely easy things if people cared enough. Learning names is one. Some say that they're bad with names, but I bet that they learn the names of people they care about pretty well. I know I do. Also easy if you care is showing up on time. I haven't got a car. Sometimes it takes me two solid hours to make a trip that someone with a car can make in a quarter of the time. I still manage to be on time more than a lot of people.

This is because I respect the people I'm going to see, and value their time. It seems reasonable to expect the same in return. I figure that if I play my cards right and have some lucky breaks, I may have fifty more years ahead of me on this Earth. I don't mean to seem morbid or fatalistic. It's just my way of saying that life is short. It's so short that even those with no ambition wish they had more time, and I have a lot of ambition. I just have no time to spare, and I definitely have no time to waste. That leads me to consideration of the intolerable attitude many seem to have towards me.

I cannot abide by people who show me that, in their opinion, my time is for them to burn up in whatever way they see fit. They can talk my ear off, tie me up with trifling errands and tasks that I have no stake in the completion of, or just keep me waiting.  That's really what bothers me the most. Now, understand that I'm not thinking of strangers fumbling for change in front of me at the grocery store checkout lane. Being angry at those people would be to waste more of my time that they did in the first place. I'm talking flagrant, blatant cases of wanton waste exclusively.

Also, let me stress my understanding. I'm hardly perfect, even in this thing that I'm railing against. Now and then, I wind up costing someone precious minutes from their life. If there's any difference which reflects well on me, it's that I understand the gravity of the situation. Other people may be oblivious or blithe where mortality is concerned, but not me. I know the score, as I've indicated above. I do my very best to forestall the tragic waste of my fellow man's finite time by not failing to come through, or at the very worst providing some kind of notice so that his time can be somehow productively employed.

Don't make the mistake of interpreting the tone of this post as negative. It's not negative. It's assertive. I'm not counting on any more than 438,000 more hours, and I have plans for each of them. They can't be replaced, so wasting one is a pretty severe affront to me. I'm going to be on my deathbed wishing I could live a little longer, but it's not going to be with the knowledge that one day when I had things to do, some guy asked me for a favor and didn't show up at my home until hours after the appointed time. There's just so much a guy can take.