Anaika+M's+OpEd+Article


 * We're Food For Worms, So Don't Waste My Time!**

By Anaika Miller


You can waste time, you can lose track of it, you can even kill it, but you can never replace it. True, within your allotted frame you can “make” time for things, but really that just translates to squeezing more activities into an already hazardously small space. It’s not recommended, but like pigging out at Thanksgiving, the majority of us do it.

It seems that different people and different cultures run on their own time, or at least put a radically different value on it than each other. In America, the majority of people consider it rude for people to be tardy while in Italy and Mexico it’s practically a written rule that things will start late and run late. I myself am notoriously late for, let’s face it, practically everything I attend (a great trait for an aspiring journalist, I know). Ironically, I do, or at least try to, spend my time frugally.

At a relatively young age, I developed an extremely selfish habit of viewing the world through cynical eyes. I realized that I could use my time more efficiently if I stopped doling it out to people or things I didn’t really care about. Over the years, I deemed that people who were, among other things, boring, humorless, racist or in-your-face religious were "unworthy of my time". I effectively squashed any chance that I would spend my time too freely by deciding to go it alone rather than spend time with them. Same goes for “unworthy” activities. In a world filled with an endless number of people and activities, I felt that it would be beneficial to identify the deserving and throw out the rest. To this day, I’ve continued to use this strict system because it has worked for the most part. I don’t have many regrets on how I’ve spent my time, and I’m convinced that I would have more if I weren’t so discriminatory.

No, society doesn’t completely sicken me, but a lot of people don’t make me happy and I’ve realized that if that’s the case, I usually can’t make their life more enjoyable either. By all means, I don’t treat these “unworthy” people badly: in passing, I’m cordial but I don’t get any closer than that. Though it seems harsh, I’m really just cutting out the awkward half-baked friendships that many people seem to have. You know, the ones that are “fun” to be with but after awhile, you don’t feel that they’ve really added anything to your life. I give my trust and respect to only those who have earned it, and once lost, it is often lost forever. I believe that a minute spent with someone, or doing something, that you love is a minute well-spent, and a lot of well-spent minutes make up an honest, meaningful life.

I, like many other people, are cramming an intense workload into a relatively short period of time this year. Seeing as life is a race against an invisible clock, shouldn’t everyone be justified in cutting out the “unworthiness” in their life? I would completely understand and in fact, appreciate it, if people were more frank with each other. We won’t ever all be best friends, so why waste time pretending? If people or activities don’t make us happy, why should we feel the need to include them in our lives? In the hustle and bustle, we lose sight of things that really matter, but we need to realize that time isn't going to slow down for anyone. If we told the truth more often than white lies, we'd not only save time, society would be a lot better off. Relationships would shrug off their phoniness and people would be able to finally dedicate their time to people and things that they truly loved.

So show up to my party late, it's no big deal, but don't waste my time and say that you're my friend if you really don't care.

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