Waste Your Time Wisely

I grew up with an unorthodox Orthodox priest. That is to say - he was (is) so strictly adherent to Orthodox living that by today's standards, it's unorthodox. And I love him dearly for it. One of the things I love and appreciate most about my priest is that he has these sayings, his words of wisdom, that he repeats constantly to us in Sunday school and in his Sunday morning sermons. "Love in truth and truth in love," he always says, or "Ma'feesh cell phone fe kenesah! [No cell phones in church!]," or "Odas sa'a tamania! [Liturgy is at 8:00!]"

But my favorite of his, and the one that always plays back in my mind as I grow older, is "Your time is your life. You waste your time, you waste your life."

Your time is your life. You waste your time, you waste your life. Your time is your life.

Never have these words meant so much to me as they do now, in this isolated, surreal five-month block of time that I think of in my head as "Step 1 time," in which I have absolutely no free time at all. (Even writing this blog post is cutting into time I have scheduled to be studying an Infectious Disease lecture...hopefully it's a wise waste of time...). A recently graduated medical student once told me, "You'll never again in your life be able to study for anything the way you are about to study for Step 1." That's how intense the studying gets for this most crucial of licensing exams.

And now that I'm scheduling every precious hour of my life so precisely in order to achieve my end goal, now that every minute must be spent carefully in order to avoid any wasted time, I think back to how much time I wasted before and almost cringe at the remembrance of how much time I have wasted in my life. Did I really spend the summer binge-watching three full seasons of that TV show in one week? How could I have possibly let three months go by last year without opening my Bible just once? What have I been doing with my time? What have I been doing with my life?

No, I'm not having a mid-life crisis. I'm young, naive, bold, idealistic. But now that I can't afford to waste any time for fear of performing poorly on this exam, my eyes have been opened to just how poorly I have been using the time God has granted me in the past 20-odd years. Nothing will bring this time back. And boy, I really hope I never see the day when I am kneeling in front of the Almighty and He asks me, "What have you done with your time? Why did you waste your life?"

My dear friends and readers, never say to yourselves, "I don't have time." YOU HAVE THE TIME. If you are reading this and haven't yet said your daily prayers, GET UP NOW AND DO IT. GO. Close this window and close Facebook and hide your phone under a pillow for ten minutes and GO READ YOUR BIBLE. Don't let one more day go by in bitterness and hurt feelings and just go apologize to that person against whom anger has been festering in your heart. Go be productive and useful to society and expand your mind and learn something about the world. Go to church and sing praises and cry for forgiveness. GO. Don't waste your time. Your time is your life. Don't waste your life.