Ben Wilson, LPC

On a recent trip to Arizona we went to see the Justin Timberlake film, In Time.  Watch the trailer. In the movie time is the primary currency instead of money. It's not the greatest movie ever, but it does a good job of addressing the element of time in regards to our existential dilemmas of; death, meaninglessness, isolation and freedom.  

In our culture we have traded time for money as we work harder to earn more, spend more. The cost to our souls has been great.

Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath puts it this way,

The problem is not simply that we work too much, the problem is that we are working for the wrong reward. We are paid in the wrong currency. We reward the fruits of our labor and the sweat of our brow with money, goods and services. We need to seek instead a more fertile, healing balance of payments--some of our pay in money, and some of our pay in time.

What if we were to expand our definition of wealth to include those things that grow only in time--time to walk in the park, time to take a nap, time to play with children, to read a good book, to dance, to put our hands in the garden, to cook playful meals with friends, to paint, to sing, to meditate, to keep a journal. What if we were to live, for even a few hours, without spending money, cultivating time instead as our most precious resource?

Cultivating time is a key to healing and growing as an individual and as a couple.