The fluorescent bulbs flickered and let out a hum. The sound of keys repeated like rain falling on the earth. A faint smell of coffee and someone’s perfume lingered in the air. I stared blankly at the white wall. Once a source of inspiration, it seemed so empty in the moment. Redundancy is creativity’s mortal enemy, but avoiding redundancy is often a lack of structure and discipline. Where does one really find balance?

The endlessly growing pile of magazines and spreadsheets didn’t look much different than the year before. There were a few extra documents showing areas of growth in the past year. A few new processes had been made to create a higher level of efficiency and accurate testing. We were watching some new brands and following this year’s marketing trends. Things were progressing forward as they should be, but something was missing. A lack of excitement perhaps, lost sight of the high aspirations for each year. Strangely, those aspirations were met and exceeded, only the vision was lost. It was another day at the office, taking over the fashion world one shoe at a time.

But it wasn’t just the office. Things that used to captivate felt like daunting tasks. My feet were heavy walking to the car to run errands. The spring landscape felt less bright as the shade of monotony clouded the sky. Even the sparkling refreshment of brut could not quench my thirst. What is this blanket of fog that can cloud our lives?

In fact, there was a beautiful earth somewhere under that barrier. I had traveled more places in the world in that past year than I had ever been. I had grown closer with my friends and family. I indulged more frequently in the spoilage of life from designer bags to exotic vacations. Life was beautiful to anything but the naked eye.

Why is it that no matter how we progress in life, we choose to constrain ourselves in a desire to want more. Something different. Something better. While the pursuit of betterment is a quality to admire, the disregard for the ordinary is ungrateful and disgusting. So what is the missing piece.

We are glued to our screens searching for anything new, exciting, exhilarating – often missing out on life itself. I have found, the truth is that time is the new luxury. We all have more than one being could ever care to possess. We get to experience more of the world as transportation makes travel easy, and the world small. We have every essential basic and more. Even hobbies and frivolous desires are met in today’s consumer world. Yet, there is no joy in possessing every piece of our heart’s desire. There is no happiness that comes from packing in every possible experience into life.

True transient happiness comes from time. Our world has become cluttered. Like a privileged child’s playroom with toys scattered around the floor with no regard for their care. Like a shallow river so full of stones that the current is never smooth and no one can pass through the water, we fill our lives in every crevice, until there is room for nothing else. How can we expect to enjoy what life has to offer if we’re too busy to see, notice or value it?

Value in and of itself is such a novel concept. While the use of the world as a verb is related to monetary worth, the noun is quite different. Monetary value often rings the contradiction in our mind. Something cheap, readily available, and over marketed. Merriam Webster defines value as “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.”

In order to understand the value of time, we must regard it. Value it. Cherish it, and acknowledge its worth. Time is not just a few more millimeters of space on your watch. It’s all we have here on earth. We trod on it. We fill it will unimportant burdens, like filling a luxury Prada handbag with sand and gum wrappers. Time has value.

How does the value of time become luxury? As the coffee continues to brew, paperwork continues to pile, and abundance of activities and material positions start to fill our time with the numbness of overload, time becomes more rare. Like a gem or an ancient artifact, it’s almost impossible to have in abundance. Time is limited. It has value. Time is a luxury.

Glancing up from the screen, the world looks completely changed. If time is a luxury that holds such value, how carelessly we fritter it away. How many small things we allow to come between us and a truly enriched life. How many layers of fog we create and fill up the beautiful sky. Lighten your load friends. See life in a new light. Live life like time is a luxury. Create some for yourself, and break the chains of needless monotony.