Temporal Piggy-banks

Time is money when you weave your way through a slow-moving crowd, muttering obscenities as you contemplate the important meeting you are late for.

Time is pleasure when you inch your car toward your turn, hoping to intimidate a pedestrian into interrupting her leisurely stroll and hurrying up.

Sometimes I wonder, what will you do with those few seconds you saved?

Do you go home and place your precious seconds in a temporal piggy-bank, waiting to accumulate enough time to finish your violin concerto or the great Canadian novel?

Will you squeeze in an extra sentence in the bedtime story you grudgingly read to your child?

Or will you finally have enough spare time to tell your spouse I love you before it is too late and regrets set in?

Waste Not, Want Not

Last fall, my mother made a delicious preserve using fruit from an apple tree she found in our neighborhood. My mother was surprised that this apple tree was not picked clean by hungry scavengers; people walking by the tree were not tempted by its supple fruit, preferring to leave the apples on the ground to form compost.

Having grown up in a country where food shortages were not uncommon, my mother could not imagine letting the apples she found go to waste. Despite living in a country blessed with an embarrassing abundance of food, she has not forgotten to Waste Not, Want Not.

Then there's me.

Despite the example of my mother, I am ashamed to admit I have adopted the culture of waste that many of us are fortunate to experience. I say fortunate, because it truly is fortunate to live in a country where food is so plentiful, you don't think twice about wasting it.

My behaviour is all the more baffling because I often deride the vapid consumerism that leads to a culture of waste whilst scraping my leftovers from dinner into the trashbin. Perhaps it's time to confront this incongruence and resolve to minimize my contribution to the culture of waste.