Happy first day of fall! I was chuckling with a colleague today about how the rain has returned to Vancouver on this first autumn day after a sunny and warm last day of summer. Nature’s timing is sometimes impeccable.

Speaking of time, my late father used to say, “there are only 24 hours in a day.” He usually said it when he was frustrated about my time management on a chore or homework! I always thought though that there was something deeper in the phrase. And then on Friday, a friend and colleague gave me a great image about time that gave me a clue. This friend has a disability and so she uses a model of ‘coupons’ for herself. She only has so many ‘coupons’ with which to work each day in terms of her own energy level. She very clearly has to say, ‘I can do this, I can do that, etc. but that will have to wait until tomorrow for another ‘coupon.’ It actually sounds like a very healthy way of budgeting time.

And then I was thinking about my time; how do I use my ‘coupons?’ Like many of us, there is lots of work to do and, “there are only 24 hours in a day.” (Thanks Dad, I think I finally go it!) And besides work, there are family and friends, there’s re-creation, there’s my physical health, my mental health, my spiritual health. There is an old Rabbinic admonishment that says, ‘a human who does not have a single hour to him/herself every day is enslaved.’ So the ‘coupons’ are not just for work; they are coupons for budgeting my time for life. And we all have these coupons; each member of your team has coupons. Are they taking the time to spend their coupons on life or are they (or you) enslaved to the current project or chore at work? We are, after all, human beings, not human doings.

So may this week spend our coupons appropriately.