“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.
This is one of my favorite inspirational quotes. I have it posted on my wall at my “day” job as a reminder to stop constraining my thinking to the old adage that there is not enough time to get all of the things done and make a difference. With the timesavers we have today, we are even more efficient than those extraordinary people we read about. Every day has 24 hours, 1,440 minutes OR 86,400 seconds. It took Michaelangelo 4 years to paint the sistine chapel. Mother Teresa taught in India for 17 years before devoting herself to caring for the sick and poor in 1948. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged, and disabled; and a leper colony. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.
Do you find yourself saying “I don’t have enough time to…” insert your ending here: learn something new, help another person, develop a relationship, teach. Personally I have stopped using those words in my vocabulary. We all have our priorities and goals and it’s not possible to do everything so we make choices. But that’s not about not having enough time, it’s about making choices. When you choose to do something, you choose consciously. Whether choosing to go at things on your own, do things the way you’ve always done them, or ignore the opportunity to collaborate, combine and support others, these are all choices and you cannot pass them off as time constraints.
So the next time you encounter someone new to animal rescue and welfare asking for help, or you hear about a new way to do things, a new system or method for things you already know, don’t dismiss these opportunities to choose to spend the time before saying you don’t have enough.
