When You're Running Out of Time

If there is equality among human beings, it is with "time." We are equally given 24 hours a day. Imagine if you have a boss who gives you a per diem of $84,000 but at the end of the day, you need to give him back everything you have not spent. What would you do? Of course, you may do everything in your power and spend all the money. Well, you have such a boss and his name is Time. Everyday, you are given 84,000 seconds but at the end of the day, Time gets everything. You will not be able to re-live anything unspent.

But what if time already become the currency, when you need to buy time in order to live?

I watched the movie In Time (directed and produced by Andrew Niccol, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, released in October 2011) on the plan en route to the US. I was thrilled with the idea that time is the currency but like in the current world where people kill for money, people in that future world kill others to buy them sometime to live.

By 2161, humans are given only 25 years to live but by genetic alteration, one stops aging at 25 but needs to earn time to continue living. If you have more time, you are rich and can live even a century and immortality could even be possible. Time is transferrable and could be shared among individuals. Any available time one has is displayed in an implant on the lower arm. Transferring time is as easy as holding one's hand. When that time display reaches zero, the person dies instantly. In that world, time made the world so much unequal.

The society is divided into classes and each class live in a certain time zones. Crossing time zones is not prohibited but if you are poor, that is the last thing you want to do. When you cross a time zone, you need to deposit at least one month of your time. As you approach the richest city, the amount of time you have to pay increases. The rich rules the world and they have the power to loan time to people and take it back with interest. They also have the power to increase the costs of living. Their goal is to make more time and become richer while the poor, working so hard becomes poorer and run out of time.

So what if you know the exact time of your death and you can even watch the clock ticks on your arms? What an agony that is! But that could even be beneficial, at least you will know how much time left for you to do things you could have done before or do things you really wanted to. At least you and your family could prepare, contrary if the doctor pronounced that you still have six months to live yet you don't know the exact time. It could be sooner.

It made me even more realized that time is really precious. Even though I cannot see my living time ticks, I know that I should spend and invest time wisely. Time might be running out... even as I write this. There were instances that I could have wanted a longer day, or an additional day in the week but agonizing with those does not add time to my life but living time is subtracted every second, every ticking of the clock. Time flies so easily, indeed.

So what would you do to ensure that you will not run out of time?