“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”—Carl Sandburg
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“You can’t buy it, rent it, hoard it, multiply it, make it or save it. You can only spend it.” That’s what Merrill Douglass, author of Success Secrets, said of time as a resource. He was damned right!
Sir Anthony van Dyck, a Flemish Baroque artist, had penned these words about time: “Too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice. But for those in love, time is not.”
But time is passing swiftly. There are 1,440 minutes in a single day. A week comprises 168 hours. Annually, there are 8,760 hours. Throughout your lifetime, you will experience 701,280 hours.
“The only way to live,” she added, “is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is – a miracle and unrepeatable.”
Time is too precious to be spent on nothing. But somehow, there is beauty every second or minute of time. “Sometimes,” Lauren Oliver wrote in Pandemonium, “I felt like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you – sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.”
If we can give time a price, how much would it cost us? “There are various methods now formulated to calculate the price or cost of time,” wrote Maria Judith L. Sabilan in an article featured in S&T Post, a publication of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
“However, at the end of the day, each of us has only 24 hours a day,” she noted. “The price or cost of time will mainly depend on how we manage or use time efficiently. The cost of the time spent on any given activity is the value to use of what we otherwise would have been doing with that particular time.”
At one point in my career, I was employed at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) located in Silang, Cavite. On weekends, I would travel to Manila for recreational activities. To avoid arriving in the city by lunchtime, I had to wake up early due to the severe traffic congestion.
Research indicates that individuals in Metro Manila can spend approximately two hours caught in traffic jams. When considering the vast number of commuters during peak times, this results in a staggering total.
According to two separate studies conducted several years ago, the Philippines incurs daily losses amounting to billions of pesos as a consequence of traffic congestion. Specifically, in Metro Manila, the estimated loss in potential income is around P2.4 billion each day.
According to the studies, the losses include “lost work hours, lost business opportunities due to delays and missed deadlines and wasted fuel; as well as indirect losses such as withdrawal of potential foreign investments, missed business opportunities and reduced capital inflow.”
There is significant value in time, which prompted the government to enact Republic Act 10535, commonly referred to as the Philippine Standard Time (PhST). This legislation mandates that all national and local government offices adhere to the PhST in their operations and utilize it as the official time reference across all official timekeeping devices.
The synchronized time is derived from the network time protocol (NTP) established by the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration. The Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 10535 define NTP as an internet standard protocol that ensures precise synchronization of computer clocks within a network to the millisecond.
I am uncertain whether we are consistently adhering to the PhST. Alternatively, are we still engaging in the practice known as “Filipino time,” which refers to the tendency to arrive late to social gatherings or events?
“It’s something that is perfectly normal in the country but drives foreigners, especially Westerners, crazy,” wrote Framelia V. Anonas, who was then the editor-in-chief of S&T Post. “But while they are in the country, they have no choice but to accept it without, of course, consenting to it.”
In her article, Anonas asserts that the tendency for tardiness among Filipinos originated from Spanish influence. This behavior was notably addressed by Dr. Jose Rizal in his novel, Noli Me Tangere, where he emphasized that it was customary for important individuals to arrive late.
When the Americans arrived, they were particularly shocked by the Filipino approach to time. In an effort to instill the concept of “American time,” which emphasizes punctuality, they faced challenges in changing this ingrained habit.
Consequently, the notion of “Filipino time” emerged during this period. Historically, Filipinos had a different perception of time. Anonas cites historians who explain that ancient Filipinos measured time according to seasons or significant events, such as hunting, planting, harvesting, or celebrating.
Even in the modern age of technology, including computers and mobile phones, some Filipinos continue to adhere to the concept of Filipino time. Anonas notes, “Filipino time is known all over the country and is still practiced. But the good thing is that more and more Filipinos are getting educated on respecting the time and other people’s time.”
