Ghost Soldiers

The lesson about time, how it marches on, and how I need to reckon with it and utilize it well came home recently. Took me back about a year...

I was reading a book, Ghost Soldiers. This is a powerful account about the horrific experiences of a group of WWII prisoners, men who were sorely mistreated and neglected by their Japanese captors, men who over the course of several years wasted away to almost sheer skin and bone (hence their nickname, Ghost Soldiers).

Despite being helplessly forgotten in a prison camp, an ocean away from anything or anyone familiar, they suffered unimaginable horrors, had few resources at their disposal and frankly, knew little hope of survival. Yet, in this dire situation the men put to work their only assets, their intellect, their imagination, their abilities, their attitudes and their time.

They had time abundant. These prisoners really had time to burn. And they used it well. Read the section about their constuctive approach toward time management (!), involving language lessons, athletics, studying astronomy, exchanging individual expertises, creating art, improving their surroundings, and more. Ghost soldiers, perhaps, but men with a sense of using time well. Try perusing pages 132-136 for more.

Back to today. You and I have been given the gift of time. In the coming new year, many competing priorities will arise, demanding our time and energy. Some of those will revolve around work, outreach, education. There will be time demands from family. Our stuff will require our energies and attentions. How do we balance? How do we apply ourselves to the most significant, most important (which is certainly not going to be the most urgent) priorities? That, of course, is a major question most of us deal with at one time or another...

By grace we have 365 days a year, 24 hours in each day, to spend somehow. Most of us in the US are fortunate in that what we do with that time is pretty a matter of choice. Unlike the men above, we're not typically faced with an abundance of time and few distractions. Still, there are lessons to be learned from them.

The men at Cabutuan made good use of their time, engaging in meaningful relationships, encouraging and caring for each other, exercising their minds and bodies, carving meaning out of a nearly meaningless situation. Somehow, if they could make time purposeful, I suppose I can too.

How? How will YOU use your coming days?