An exploration of time as wealth through understanding our power to steward it.
It has almost become cliché to say that time is the most valuable thing on earth. Ever fleeting. Unchangeable. Ruling over all of us.
Time is not kinder to anyone because of status or man-given titles. It does not bend for ambition. It does not pause for preparation. It has a kind of quiet supremacy over us all.
And it is startling how quickly it passes.
In a conversation with my best friend last week, I realized that seven years had passed before I actually did something I said I wanted to do. And this was not something that required building or planning. It was as simple as going to the opera.
While the pandemic did play a role in delaying that hope, it does not fully explain the delay. It was a thousand small decisions that stretched into seven years. It was the distractions that felt urgent or all-encompassing. And now, looking back—outside of the pandemic and pregnancy—I cannot tell you what most of those reasons were.
What this highlights for me is that time is so valuable that there are many forces competing for it—people, platforms, institutions, expectations. Our time and energy are constantly being pulled.
And not all of us are positioned the same when it comes to time.
The ability to steward our time is shaped by systems—by labor expectations, caregiving responsibilities, economic pressure, and cultural norms around productivity. Some of us have greater autonomy over our schedules. Others are navigating structures that demand constant output just to survive.
So when we talk about time as wealth, we are not only talking about personal intention. We are also acknowledging the need for collective shifts in how we value rest, presence, and human rhythm.
Still, within whatever space we do hold, our strategic use of time is powerful.
What happens when we take 20 minutes at the top of the day to meditate or pray instead of scroll?
How do we feel when we take an hour to walk during lunch instead of working through it?
What happens when we take a mental health day to go to the beach—or wherever your place of restoration is—and simply be?
A weekend away can reframe your life. A week on vacation can shift your dreams and goals. But even more than those larger pauses, it is the small, daily decisions that shape the direction of our lives.
Before the clock governed our days, seasons and community rhythms did. Time was cyclical. It moved with harvests, with births, with communal gatherings. It was relational.
Somewhere along the way, time became something to optimize rather than inhabit.
Bringing this back to the conversation of wealth.
In this series on redefining wealth, I first explored community and connection as indicators of abundance. In this reflection, I am focusing on time.
The ability to steward our time intentionally creates wealth in our lives.
So many of us work tirelessly to create and sustain the lives we love. But every so often, we have to pause and ask: What is it that I truly love?
Many people express creativity through clothing, home design, and personal adornment — forms of self-expression that sometimes require monetary exchange.
But many of us also love dinners with friends. Traveling with family. Retreating. Rediscovering ourselves.
So the question becomes: What is it about those experiences that we love?
Is it the place?
Or the people?
Is it what we learn?
Or who we become in those moments?
Is it worth working endlessly to afford those experiences if we rarely create space for them? Or are there ways to cultivate those same feelings without the theoretical middleman?
Time as wealth looks like opting out of notions that were conceived long before we arrived earthside.
It looks like being intentional with our time—not in pursuit of greater productivity, but in pursuit of joy.
It also looks like reverence.
What if time is not something to maximize, but something sacred to tend?
What if it is not a commodity, but a trust?
When we spend time doing what we want—even if it does not feel justifiable—it releases something inside of us. It frees us from the quiet voice that keeps us trapped in cycles of scarcity.
Every small moment of realizing you do not have to show up the way you have always shown up is an investment in a freer future.
Slowing down to notice joy in ordinary moments is not a new message. We have heard it before. But for a long time, I treated presence like another item on my to-do list: Be present. It felt like something I was failing to accomplish.
But when I began thinking about rest as a birthright, and time as a resource entrusted to me to steward—not maximize—I realized it was not another task.
It was a way of being.
So what does time as a tool of wealth look like?
It looks like noticing thoughts of scarcity, lack, or fear that push you to do more and accomplish more—and recognizing that those thoughts are conditioning, not truth.
It looks like gently interrupting that pattern with gratitude for who you are in this moment.
It looks like choosing joy first, when possible.
It looks like sitting with the people you love without an agenda.
It looks like reclaiming 10 extra minutes to meditate, move your body, or breathe deeply.
It looks like remembering that your time is yours to steward—not surrender.
Time is wealth when it is used to nourish life, not merely sustain it.
Asé.
Sankofa Community Welness 