adminIf you were a little younger last year, you are a little older this year. If you did not achieve your life’s passion last year, you do hope to do so this year, all things being equal.
Remember, however, that time flies — tempus fugit as the old Romans correctly taught the world, and that is the message in this article.
We are now in the 12th year of the 21st century according to the calendar that was worked out and introduced by Julius Caesar and his famous astronomer, Sosigenes in 46 BC.
Our days are, by and large, a whirlwind of activity to fend for ourselves in order to keep body and soul together. Most people in commerce and industry, in churches and governments, on land, on the high seas and in the air are controlled by the clock and the calendar. It is time and date that are the basis of our existence.
In the transport business, time is of much essence, and so it is in the educational field where syllabi must be gone through in a given timeframe.
Workers in whatever industry are paid on the basis of the time they have worked. Self-employed people should also keep an eye on the clock and the calendar if they are to succeed in their various endeavours.
In Zimbabwe as well as elsewhere in the Southern African region, there are numerous cases of some professionals such as medical doctors behaving as if time is of no consequence to both themselves and their patients.
In 2011, I had very sad experiences at Bulawayo’s Mpilo Hospital on several occasions. On the first occasion, I had to wait for six hours for the doctor who was said to be on duty at the outpatients department.
When she eventually turned up, she was haughty and very unfriendly. I thanked God that I was suffering from nothing more serious than arthritis.
On the second occasion, my wife was feeling an excruciating abdominal pain, and we got to the same hospital at 7pm. It was not until 11pm that the doctor on duty arrived.
The third occasion was really tragic. My mother-in-law was taken to the same hospital by ambulance and arrived there at 6.30am. It was not until 11.30am, a good five hours later, that she was attended to, not by a doctor, but by a sympathetic senior nurse after relatives had started screaming and shouting at the top of their voices. It was a sad experience.
I was also firmly asking for the telephone number of the doctor who was supposed to be on duty. None of the nurses would or could give it to me. They refused to give me his name as well, saying that they were not allowed to do either.
The sympathetic senior nurse decided to admit my mother-in-law very much against the laid down procedure of that hospital. My mother-in-law died a few days later. If the doctor who was on duty had kept the time stipulated for him, it is most probable that my mother-in-law would have been successfully treated.
In other fields, such as public transport, it is most disheartening that time does not matter at all any more. The National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) is the worst culprit in this regard. Not only in Bulawayo but in
Harare as well, inter-city passenger train arrival times are never kept. Why? And again why?
Probably Mr Fanuel Masikati, the NRZ public relations manager can explain to the whole nation why the once-reputable NRZ has deteriorated to such a level that no serious-minded businessperson would want to use it to travel from one town to another for business meetings.
“Time is money” is an old business truism. Every employee in whatever field should deeply appreciate that if he or she is employed on an eight-hour day or night, every minute of the eight hours should be gainfully accounted for not necessarily by the employer but primarily by the employee himself or herself.
Time is also vital in the agricultural sector where a loss of a wet day or two results in a complete crop failure, especially in drought-prone regions such as Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands and Masvingo.
The Government department responsible for the distribution of seed and other inputs nationally has to take time into most serious consideration, and so must those responsible for public tillage, reference is being made to the District Development Fund tractor operators in this particular regard.
People who keep regular hours are healthier than those whose regimen is rather haphazard.
It is healthier to turn in early and rise early instead of going to bed in the small hours of the morning and get up at noon.
Once the body has got used to that “lazy people’s” life- style, it becomes extremely difficult to re-adjust it to a normal, respectable mode of existence.
It then becomes a typical example of a Greek philosopher’s observation:
“You sow a deed and it becomes a habit, the habit matured into your character, and the character becomes your fate.”
In the rural areas, a great deal of every precious time is lost by young men and women who spend endless hours at so-called growth points quenching perennial thirst.
That time could be better spent doing useful work such as moulding bricks for sale, or preparing one’s fields and studying privately in the evening so as to be better able to face various future challenges.
As the year 2012 inexorably flies by, it is important to remember that time is primarily a commodity the wasting of which generates want and misery. Make hay while the sun shines is an English saying that is pregnant with age-old wisdom.
Online Reporter