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There was a dad whose son was very lazy, and he wished to teach his son to cherish time. One day, when his son was lounging around and refusing to do anything worthwhile with his time, the dad took out an 8-inch long wooden rod. The son thought his dad was going to hit him, so he stood up and paid attention to what his dad was going to say.
The dad said, “A person’s life is like this 8-inch long wooden rod. 8-inches represents 80 years. When you are under 20 years old, you don’t have much ability to contribute to the household and society. You can only be a taker of your family’s hard work and society’s services. During those 20 years, you’re not very useful.” Then the dad took out a knife and cut off 2 inches from the rod. BAM. The loud sound startled the son.
The dad continued, “When a person reaches 60, they lose the ability to contribute to society. They retire and rely on their family or the government to provide for them. So that’s another 20 years.” BAM. The dad cut off another 2 inches. The son was feeling very uncomfortable at this point.
The dad kept going, “The remaining 40 years, we can divide into three parts. People spend a third of their time sleeping, so we need to cut that off.” BAM. “People also spend a lot of time eating, showering, using the restroom.” BAM.
The son was very nervous and said, “Ok I get it dad. You can stop cutting the rod now.”
The dad replied, “You don’t understand yet son. People also lose time because they get sick. And you waste so much time on pointless chatter. You really have such little time in your life to do meaningful and worthwhile things.” BAM.
From that day on, the son stopped being lazy and started to cherish his time, using it for meaningful and worthwhile purposes.