Where would you spend your time today if you stopped rushing?

In The Song of the Bird, Anthony de Mello tells a short story about the animals gathering to complain about humans. Each one names what people have taken from them: the cow her milk, the hen her eggs, the hog his flesh, the whale his oil.

Then the snail, the slowest and smallest of them, speaks last. He says he has something people would take from him if they could, something they want more than anything else. He has time.

I keep coming back to that ending.

We are always chasing time. We rush through mornings, eat while scrolling, answer messages while half-listening to the person beside us. We tell ourselves we'll rest after this project, visit after this busy season, slow down once things settle. But things rarely settle. And the time we kept postponing quietly slips away.

The snail isn't rich in speed, size, or strength. But he is rich in the one thing we keep trading away for everything else.

Maybe the lesson isn't that we need more time. Maybe it's that we already have some, and we keep giving it to the wrong things. To worry. To hurry. To proving ourselves. To screens that never give back what they take.

What if, today, we lived a little more like the snail? Unhurried. Present. Fully where we are.

Have the long conversation. Linger over coffee. Notice the sky. Call the friend you keep meaning to call. Sit with your family without checking the clock.

Time is the one gift we can't earn back once it's spent. Let's spend it on what truly matters.

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Where would you spend your time today if you stopped rushing?