"Freedom is Just Another Word...." Janice Joplin

Have a question for you. What do you own? Lets look at the word "ownership". Defined in the second college edition of the American Heritage Dictionary - ownership: n. 1. The state or fact of being an owner. 2. Legal right to the possession of a thing.

Been thinking about that. It would appear that I am the owner of many things...two properties, 4 vehicles, pets, appliances, a variety of apparel, bank accounts...etc. You probably own things too...lots of stuff.

So now let me ask you, what do you do with your time? Is that something you own? How much time do you spend on your pets, for example? An hour a day? Well, that is an hour of your time that your pets have ownership of. Who/what owns your time? Here is a summary illustrating how little of my time I actually own, using a week's amount of time as a baseline, 168 hours:

*45 hours the company owns (actual work)
*10 hours the company owns, (2 hours @day commuting)
*7 hours spent on pets
*1 hour spent on vehicles, gassing up and cleaning out
*10 hours spent on child who still lives at home and needs transportation
*3 hours spent on cleaning clothes/linens
*4 hours spent on property/home maintenance e.g., cleaning, repairing...
*14 hours spent feeding yourself/others (includes cleaning up)
*3 hours shopping for more stuff/food
*2 hours paying bills for your stuff
*7 hours spent nurturing relationships
*7 hours spent grooming one's self to fit social acceptance
*49 hours spent sleeping (based on 7 hours @ night)

Total: 162 hours of YOUR 168 weekly hours of your time that something/someone else has ownership of. We have to include sleeping, eating and grooming, because its part of the price of having a body. So you see? EVERYTHING/ONE in your life has a price. Long after the initial currency is traded for things, there is still the ongoing cost of TIME. What do you REALLY own, and what really OWNS YOU? Even the clothes you buy...gotta take care of them. EVEN your garbage owns you!!!!

My list is more geared to my average, but there are weeks I don't have ownership of 5 minutes. of MY time! And other people have different things that own their time, but I'm betting it's pretty similar accross the board.

The point of this excercise is to show that our idea of "ownership" is a fallicy. We don't "own" anything - it "owns" us. In my life, I'm going to take inventory. I'm going to simplify. Because I think I want to start owning more of my own time...because the fewer things I 'own', the less time I not only have to spend taking care of them, but giving my time away to a company who doesn't give one hoot about me so I can get more money to support those things I 'own'.

I don't really have time for this blog. I've got to hang my laundry out on the line...then clean my bathroom and brush and frontline the dogs/cat, clean the floors, then rake the yard. This afternoon the boy needs a ride to his job...there is 2 hours of my time he owns, and 2 more hours of Paul's time later when it's time for him to come home.

Do you really have time to read this?

Peace.