I had once read an amazing quote somewhere. God is a banker. Every morning he credits all our accounts with 24 hours and leaves it on us on how to use this wealth.

So what do we do with it? Actually if you do a little retrospection you will realize that out of that 24 we spend at least 13 slaving away in a major multi national or private company which will probably not even realize it if we are gone.

I am well aware that work is a basic necessity of life. It funds our lives – needs and desires and you cannot live without it. But is it necessary to devote the best years of your lives to just that and push other things out of your life?

Let me give a small example. I work in a company whose official time is 9:30 pm – 6 pm. I am in before 9. I do not take long tea/ coffee breaks and mostly end up doing lunch at my table as well. Reason – I want to finish at time and go home to my family. Spend the evening with them. I live in a big city so my travel time also cuts into the personal time I have. Yet I am a butt of jokes because I leave promptly at 6. People snicker behind my back, laugh when I get up that they do not need to look at the watch as it must be 6. There are days when I am unable to follow this schedule and am here till late, but of course those days do not count.

Again these are the people who walk in at 10, spend an hour in breakfast are down for smoke sessions. Surf net and finally begin some serious work in the middle of the afternoon. Hence they are here till 7pm or longer. And they are proud of this fact. Somehow in our country sitting longer hours in office equals to hard work.

This can be avoided by some creative time management but they don’t want to do that. In fact they work at creating this image of theirs and then maintain it.

In the bargains their families are ignored, important birthday parties are missed. In a recent case my friend’s husband came home really late the night of ‘karvachauth’ while she waited for him without having a drop of water sine morning.

It’s important to work hard to get ahead in life but in that race we should not forget the real important things in our lives. Else one day God will close our account and we will have no happy memories of our families in our savings.