Wealth? What is wealth? In general, wealth is the total value of assets and properties that is owned by an individual or a company. Nowadays, most of us are working tirelessly to increase materialistic possessions and to prosper in life. However, on this journey on working hard to maximise our wealth, we often neglect the wealth we already have. Most of us always think that we should give in all of our efforts then only we will have the chance to own the same wealth as those billionaires in the world such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. In my opinion, this is a wrong perception as we are given a wealth that is totally same as every human in the world—time.
Everyone in this world has an absolute 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. There are neither exceptions nor special cases that someone has more or fewer hours in a day. This proves that time is the wealth that we have in common and it is an equal wealth in the world as there is no way to increase or decrease our time. As a result, when we are complaining about life is unfair, we should tell ourselves that at least everyone is given the same amount of time.
Why can time be described as wealth? Wealth should be something that can allow us to live a luxury or enjoyable life but time cannot even buy us food or basic needs. So, can we still assume that time is the wealth we have? In my opinion, time definitely is a wealth we have. “Some are born great, others achieve greatness” Wealth that possessed by successful people does not appear instantly or drop form the sky, but it take a long time to build it. It might take 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years or 3 decades. Therefore, we have no reason to oppose that time is a wealth that we have in common as it is an essential elements for us to increase or gain more wealth.
Whilst it is important to increase our materialistic possessions, time is also an important wealth that we can utilise it to make improve and upgrade ourselves. Everyone has the same amount of time but why do some people have some talents and skills while some do not. This depends on how we use our time and which field we invest our time in. If an individual wastes all of his time into lazing around then he would not have any talents or skills in his life. In contrast, if an individual uses most of his time to learn new skills such as writing, singing, drawing, sports, gardening and public speaking then this individual will masters a skill and this can give him more opportunities in the future. Time is our wealth, if we invest it in a correct field then we might gain significantly from it but if we invest it in a wrong field then we might face a loss on our investment.
While time is gifted equally to every individual that roam on this earth, it would bring a lot of benefits to the world if everyone of us contributes this wealth that we have in common. Everyone knows that we cannot buy time but we can contribute our time to create something that is beneficial to the world. Some people might argue that I don’t even have enough time for my own things, why should I still contribute my time to other things that might not related to me when I cannot get any benefits from it? I can understand that most of the people in the world are selfish and would not contribute or work hard on anything if it cannot bring benefit to ourselves. However, there are somethings that closely related to us and would bring a lot of benefits to ourselves and future generations. As a result, every human on this earth have no excuses to not involve and contribute our time to something beneficial to the world.
The first thing we should contribute our wealth we have in common is built an inclusive and tolerant society. For me, an inclusive and tolerant society is a society where every human treated equally without looking at gender, skin colour, religion and races. An inclusive and tolerant society is something essential and inevitable to this world and the future generation but it is not easy to make it a reality. This is because building an inclusive and tolerant society involve everyone on this earth and everyone should contribute our time in it to make it successful. An inclusive and tolerant society can be described as a wealth that we are building for our future generation by using the wealth we have in common. In my opinion, it is worthy to contribute the wealth we have in common no matter more or less to build this wealth for our future generations as it can ensure a happy and peaceful future.
“Time exists so that everything does not occur at the same time”
The second thing that we should contribute our time is the fight against climate change. Some people will think that this is a far off issue and there is nothing to worry about. Actually, climate change has been bringing effects to our day to day life but maybe we just don’t realise it. Have you realised out that weather nowadays is weird? Have you noticed that some countries are hot until people cannot even have enough of water to survive but there are never ending rain in some countries until the flood occurs? This is all because of climate changes. However, what can we do in the fight against climate changes? There are a lot of things that we can do in the fight against climate change but we just need to contribute some of our time to do it. For example, we can take some time to walk or cycle instead of driving to a nearby place to reduce carbon emissions. Besides that, we also can use up time every week to plant some trees and take care of it. In addition, parents and teacher should use more time to educate the younger generation about the importance of the fight against climate change and ways to involve ourselves in it. There are a lot of things that we can achieve if we are willing to contribute some of our wealth that we have in common and be considerate enough.
“Time exists so that everything does not occur at the same time” Time is bestowed upon every human on this earth. Time is also the wealth we have in common. As a closing statement, we should use this wealth more wisely as it is not like money where we can earn by working hard. We cannot do anything to earn back the time that past but we can only regret. Therefore, we should use time wisely by building more wealth that could bring benefits to ourselves and the world. A clean unpolluted world and an inclusive and tolerant society is something that definitely worthy for us to invest the wealth we have in common in it because it is a gift to our future generations just like Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and other inventors that have used up all their time to invent something useful for us. So, let’s be an altruist on contributing our time and translate our thoughts and ideas into action to make our world a better place for the future.
This is my essay submission to the Royal Commonwealth Society, UK for The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Writing Competition 2016 (Original Title: The wealth we have in common)
