Semper fidelis.

For all the burgeoning motivations, whatever it may be, the start of any year is certainly a good moment for personal reflection, for reminiscing how the past year went by in a jiffy, or for the setting of (mostly unrealistic) aspirations. Curiously, the time at the start of the year is no different than the time elsewhere throughout the year, perhaps only in value. In any case, With optimism, I suppose that time is valuable to you, the reader.

That’s enough sugarcoating for what I’m about to say. As with any and every self-respecting individual, I value my time. Some people view time as a measure of productivity - the amount of time spent working is apparently a metric of self-worth, as is the amount of time spent not working. To each their own. At some point in our lives, we learn that time is a cherished thing, a thing to be respected. My time.

Personally, I value my time over all else: family time, productive timetabling, self-care moments are at least thoughtfully outlined for each month. But my concern is not about an individual’s possessiveness over their time - its a matter of maturity and belief. More concerning is the possessiveness of the time of others. In a group setting, is it still a private property or does it devalue into a shared resource? Here, “group setting” refers to any environment where at least one given individual asserts possessiveness over their time, like a group outing or a meeting. Note the diction here - “devalue” is less of a tongue-in-cheek and more of a saddening irony. Shared time attains a depreciates in worth as increasingly many people are given membership.

Yes, for anyone that’s wondering, I am indignant at being forced to lose possessiveness over my time. Grr… these (plural, of course!) people should know who they are. Of course this is an elegant way of putting forth the frank phrase “wasting my time”. That is not to say that I’ve only met people who disrespected my time, but that is somehow the expectation and the norm. I say this with a sufficiently large sample size.

As someone who packs their time to the brim for value and growth (what I do with my time is immaterial here), I am incredibly protective of this private property of mine, which implies that I am particularly miffed (read: angered) whenever this presumed right of mine is infringed in a group setting.

It would appear that the natural laws of respect hold at all other points except in the domain of time. Somehow, there will always be moments where shared time is chipped away by both controlled and uncontrolled delays. My gripe is certainly with the former: latecoming, poor planning or non-committal is a surefire way for me to start becoming upset. I’m not completely unreasonable though. I believe that there are leeways for inaccuracies, so to say, an acceptable epsilon of time from which latecoming should be magnanimously forgiven. After all, no one can control the unpredictables: traffic, weather or exigencies. That said, I’m much less forgiving with the latter two: poor planning and non-committal.

As should be obvious to anyone, shared time should be respected by everyone accessing said shared time. That means collectively observing a certain degree of punctuality and making productive use of said time. At this point, I ask of you, the reader (or if I’m just screaming into the void), to reflect:

Have you been a conscientious user of said shared time? If not, why?

I fail to understand the latter perspective: I see no reason that time diminishes in value when it is shared. If anything, shouldn’t it be more cherished because there are more stakeholders, and so more stake in accessing said time? Unless the underpinning issue is that no one in said collective respects their own time, at which point my concern becomes moot, I hope for some past or present being to enlighten me why time-wasting becomes more prolific as the number of users increase.

Most people are either unaffected or indifferent, choosing simply to grin and bear with it in great resemblance to a peacekeeping mission. I have no comments over those who somehow are unaffected by this disrespect: either they do not value their time, or they have an excess of time. Sure, I guess. For the indifferent, I suppose they have had their time woefully disregarded to the extent that it feels like a norm; in some sense, learned helplessness. It’s as if the possessiveness over time diminishes just as the value of shared time (which one has a stake in) behaves in a way inversely proportional to the number of people with a stake in said time.

Social norms develop over time, and I’m increasingly concerned over this blatant disregard becoming a malignant social norm. That said, I do wish to stop and ponder why this is a growing norm. For one, individuals tend to have diminished acumen when in a group setting. It is a tendency to defer decisions to the collective unless one is relied upon to come to a decision, or one is a leader of said collective. In this vein, individuals become accustomed to losing certain degrees of control over decision-making. Perhaps you find yourself following the majority in activities your group engages in, or you frequently propose activities to engage in but they are never ever chosen, or you are otherwise unaffected by whatever the choice of activity is (as long as it’s fun, right?). Whatever the case may be, decisions no longer arise from a simple function accepting a single input, but instead a more complicated function taking into account the multiple inputs from each individual member of the group. Unlike in the case of making a personal decision, the decision function is much more opaque to the individual. The output now depends on the majority, and in turn, each member composing the majority relies on varied factors. In an idealistic scenario, each member forming the majority makes an independent judgement before presenting their vote to the collective. But such an assumption is clearly unrealistic for anyone who has had human contact: humans flock and so do subsets of a group. All this is to say that decisions made by the collective are never independent, perhaps other than the first person who announces their choice.

This situation is all too familiar. In my case, there also apparently exists a further choice of an activity: suddenly having places to be some hours before an agreed upon time to meet. Colour me immature for being this spiteful, but it amazes me how people condone this to the extent that it seems to be the norm. At face value, latecoming, non-respect and non-committal to the time agreed upon are morally deplorable. Ask any schoolgoing children and they would agree that punctuality is a longstanding classroom value since antiquity (since I was in school). I am personally guilty, however, of some instances of classroom lateness, yet it has not occurred to me that my lateness has affected anyone, other than perhaps a few people who track me as I saunter into the classroom - they were already distracted, not totally my fault!

If it hasn’t been obvious enough, I am someone who’s possessive enough of my own time that I still retain a great degree of my time even in a group setting - that should be the norm. I would already be miffed, or even angered by my own wastage of personal time, so why would I not extend the same expectation of respect to the collective sharing this cherished time of mine?

And, to be completely honest, I’m mostly serious when I say that it’s “time to get a watch”. People need to start valuing time, not just theirs. Yet, I find it appalling that people express surprise over my anger whenever I sense my time being disrespected. How has this malignant groupthink crept up to us so much that asserting possessiveness becomes the exception, and even makes me the social outcast? The onus is somehow on me to condone and accept this fervent disregard for my time, but I proudly accept the outlandish label for being a dissenter if it means I get to keep my time respected by the people who use it (read: me). It puzzles me to no end, but spending time being too caught up with episodes of disrespect is itself a waste of time that I will be miffed at myself for.

Ah time… truly the only constant. Semper fi, I guess.