Trampled Time - Giving Pearls To Pigs

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” - Matthew 7:6

For me, this is by far the hardest lesson to learn. This has long been my favorite Bible verse; from when I first read it in college.

What is sacred to me? Time. I give my time in many ways to many people in many situations and in many cases, my time is trampled. Not respected. Not appreciated. Not returned. So, what to do?

Prevent. Or confront. Or both. 

How?

By remembering that life is situational. Every day, every minute, we are confronted with decisions to make – some as small as “what color shirt to I wear today” to “Do I answer this incoming phone call?” No two decisions are the same; no two situations are exactly alike. Almost everything we do involved a judgment or an assumption; sometimes we have to make snap decisions, other times we have a chance to weigh our options.

But in the end, in every situation, no matter how big or small, or how much time we have to make a decision, we always have one thing in control – ourselves.  We may not be in control of anything else in the situation, and we are NEVER in control of anyone else in the situation, but we can control ourselves. And I have to stress the last half of that sentence:  we are never in control of anyone else in the situation, but we can control ourselves.

We have one chance at life. We have a limited amount of time spent in life, and we are who we are. We each bring something different to the table, something unique, and that unique gift is important. So important that we need to protect our gift – ourselves. We all have to remember that we are worth protecting; we ARE worthwhile, no matter what anyone says, or thinks, or implies. They can’t possibly know who we are to be able to judge us, so their judgment means nothing. 

SO…because we have a limited amount of time, how we choose to spend that time becomes very important; and many situations and people in life place demands on that time. It is in our own best interest to be careful, where possible, in choosing how to spend that time. Some situations are best left avoided…that would be the prevent part of the answer above. If we can do things to protect ourselves, our emotions, our time, we can prevent some of the things that end up wasting our time.

Sometimes, though, we can’t prevent. Or don’t have time. Or a situation changes and we didn’t see that change coming.  In these cases, it is very easy, and human nature, to roll over, close our eyes, and take whatever we’re handed without a fight in hopes that this goes away faster. It is these times where the biggest wastes of time occur, and where the biggest source of damage to ourselves. On top of the time lost spent on closing our eyes,   now we face an added recovery time in repairing the damage to ourselves, if we even completely repair ourselves. Sometimes, these events cause seemingly permanent damage to our core.

And in the worst of cases, what do we do then? We look for blame.  We spend and waste even more time trying to find someone or something to place blame on, in the hopes that we can move on faster and without effort to the next situation.

Guess what?  More often than not, we only have ourselves to blame. If we’re lucky, we can change the word only to mainly. But I guarantee that we can’t change that word to never.  

But guess what else?  Regardless of whether we are only, or just mainly, to blame, at this point, the event has passed and blame doesn’t take that situation away, or return that time to us.  All we can do is learn and move forward.

 

So, going forward, what to do?

Prevent. Or confront. Or both.

Be careful of how, and where, and with whom you spend your time.  Prevent yourself from getting into a situation you know you shouldn’t, even if it’s hard to prevent. Or, confront a situation which turns into a bad or damaging use of your time.  

And believe me, this is a message as much for me as it is for anyone reading this. Probably more so for me.