At the end of every investment year Berkshire Hathaway holds a stockholders meeting. Berkshire Hathaway is the investment company founded by Warren Buffet and his long time business partner Charlie Munger. They typically close the meeting with a press conference.
At the 2019 press conference Buffet and Munger were asked the question, “What do you value most?” Since Warren Buffet is worth 130.7 billion dollars, I thought it might have been a question regarding what investment they value most, but the answer was more down to earth and yet, philosophical. They replied, “The two things money cannot buy, love and time.”
Since that press conference Charlie Munger has run out of time. He died November 28, 2023, a little short of his hundredth birthday of January 1, 1924. Warren buffet is 93 and still has some time left, but not as much as he once had.
I am retired and will turn 72 this coming July 10, and like Buffet I do not have as much time left as I once had. You can spend time but you cannot save it for a later date. And once it is spent it is gone and cannot be reclaimed. These days I give a great deal of thought about how I should spend my time, what I have left. I want to spend it well for Christ.
As one gets older it seems that time flies and I can recall that when I was younger I was very impatient with time, it did not seem to fly by like it does now and I had goals that I wanted to achieve now, but they took time.
The Psalmist tells us, “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them,” Psalm 139:16. From this life long perspective we do not all have the same amount of time, some more some less. But in each day we all have the same amount of time, twenty-four hours. Think about what you should do with it.
Those of you reading this I hope will give thought to how you are spending your time. Time is what this life is made of and will soon be over. Don’t waste it. Henry David Thoreau said, “You cannot kill time without harming eternity.”
“So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom,” Psalm 90:12.
Another excellent, post, Bro. Gary. I always appreciate your insights.
This post about time, specifically, was a needed reminder for me.