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The most valuable thing: TIME.
This next holiday (labor day – may 01 2023) I had this girl who I did used to chat before, but we never meet yet, saying to me that perhaps the time to finally meet face to face is arriving. She was the reason I am here in Zhengzhou, I had wrote about her before here on this blogpost (link) but for some reason we did stop video chatting and we never meet, but few days ago she did contacted me about her trip to see her parents very close by, and she would visit another friend here in zhengzhou. Perhaps our opportunity finally came…
Before I tell you what happen, let me change the subject a little bit here, but I promise it is related to story about her.
We all have the same amount of time in a day: 24 hours. But why is it that some people seem to accomplish so much more than others? The answer lies in how we value and use our time. Time is the most important thing we have, and it's critical that we use it wisely.
There are several reasons why time is so important. First and foremost, time is a finite resource. We only have a limited amount of it, and once it's gone, we can never get it back. This is why time is often called our most precious commodity. It's the one thing we can't buy or earn more of, no matter how much money or success we may have. Have a look on the picture about the 5 most common regrets people have at the end of their lives below.
We all know that relationships take time and effort to maintain. But when we look back on our lives, it's often the relationships we've built that bring us the most joy and fulfillment. Whether it's our family, friends, or significant other, the time we spend with the people we love is time well spent.
Now let get back to the story of this girl who wished to visit me.
She propose to me to follow her in some place she want to visit here in Zhengzhou, and I ask her, why don’t you came to visit me here at the university (my home) ? I said we can relax and take some time to chat and see that we may get to know each other better.
After chatting for a few minutes I got the impression she did not wanted to waste her time to visit me, she just want me to go along with her other plans that she had in mind, at this point I said to her, if she wants to visit me, I would reserve my time, all my day or afternoon to spend with her, instead of visiting a museum, after all this would be our first meeting face to face, and I want to be able to talk to her than be busy doing something else.
As you can see, I was giving her the most precious thing anyone can have (time),while she did not even wanted to spend a lousy afternoon with me. So I said to her, you don’t have to visit me, there was time we did start making plans to take our friendship to next level, that is why I end up here in Zhengzhou, but now I am under the impression that our friendship is not even enough for you to want to spend one afternoon with me. After my reasoning she did agree that she will not be visiting me.
Why am I writing about this ? Let me tell you…. Here at the university where I work I have NO intention to find a girlfriend, that would be very unprofessional to say nothing about been also very unethical. My friendship with the students (male and female) would never get to the next level, but many of them treat me so much better, with more consideration than her, is not very uncommon to have students spending a long time just chatting me in various activities, English corner and so on, many times I got invitations to do something together, very simple things like walking around the block just chatting.
That is why I wanted to talk about time in the beginning of this article, because now I can say that if someone are willing to spent time with you, it means they have you in high regards. That is how you evaluate relationships.
Making lot of friends gives you lot of options and dating gives you the opportunities to evaluate those options if you want to take the relationship to the next level.
Maybe one reason some people end up with bad marriages or divorced is because they don’t have a lot of options, and in that case how can they make good decisions about a life partner if they don’t have options to choose from.
To have many friends, including good relationship with the opposite sex will give you more confidence, an insight of how the opposite sex thinks, also will increase the odds of having a more fulfilling life emotionally and socially, even a better chance to find good jobs improving your career because of your network (many friends)
So don’t under estimate people skills ability, it perhaps can be even more important than technical skills when related to career success (see this pool from the book "Captivate" by Vanessa V. Edwards on the following picture.
I know my job is to teach English, but such topic allow me some flexibility and I often bring interesting topics to discuss with the students, I have been able to help a lot of students just by given them a different perspective in life and other things they should consider, I am not better than anyone here, but I am most of the time, very much older than my students, that allows me to have more experience and give good advice. As I have tell many times before , I love my job as a teacher here in China, it has given me a lot of opportunities to help students in so many different ways, that is why I keep renewing my contract and staying one more year. When my Chinese experience come to an end, I will surely going to have so many great memories of this great people to whom I have so many friends.
Article by Marcelo Gameiro
Published 23 Apr 2023
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