The Best Way to Buy Back Your Time is by Not Giving it Away
Lessons from the book “Momo and the Time Thieves”
Photo by Patti Black on Unsplash
Momo is the best imprint I have had in my life. There is a small Momo in me, just as she lives in you. I am praying to her for support these days since the grey mist surrounding the earth is thickening.
Momo is a small gypsylike girl living in an old ruin in the outskirts of Rome. Her friends are Bebbo the streetcleaner and Gigi the guide, and a mysterious turtle. She seems to have all the time of the world, playing around but also asking deep wise questions to life.
Momo is your inner wise child.
And the main character of the visionary book “Momo and the Time Thieves”, by Michael Ende. The Time Thieves are empty men in grey suits, smoking cigars. They’re made of your time, my time, everybody else’s time.
As a reader, you only find that out at the end of the book, but since I have ample time to explain everything since we’re all part of the attention economy that the grey Time Thieves created, I need to introduce them to you now.
The grey men announce themselves with a cold shiver and the smoke of their cigars, a grey mist.
Stealing your time and giving less and less in return.
Until you vanish like the smoke of a fat cigar, all your life running after your dreams while working to pay your bills.
Momo shows you what time really is, and how you can stop giving it away.
Here are her secrets.
One step at the time
At the beginning of the book, Momo meets Bebbo the Streetcleaner. Imagine having to clean the streets of Rome, a life task. But Beppo holds a secret.
He cleans at his own pace, one stone, one meter, one pavement, one block at the time. This gives him time to observe others, hear birds in the trees, and dream.
Beppo, having the simplest of jobs in the world, is the most fulfilled man on earth.
The lesson Momo learns from him;
Don’t get lost while looking at the street in front of you, stay focused on each simple task that presents itself. You’ll find endless time in there.
Momo’s secret
Momo is an outcast. As a small girl, she lives alone in a ruin. Still, people love her, bring her food, and like to be around her.
This is because she has an amazing secret.
She listens to people, really listens, with her heart.
People are too busy to listen these days. We’ve become talking heads, disconnected from our hearts, our curiosity for the others, for their stories.
People have stories. They’re endlessly fascinating
Learn to listen again to the stories that people bring to your life. This will enrich you behind belief. You will learn that your problems are just a small bleep in a vast ocean of stories.
Momo will teach you to embrace the ocean, not hold on to the drop of water you are.
The only thing you need to do is open your heart, make time for the people that occur in your life, and listen.
Listen.
The grey men’s strategy
In the book, people have less and less time to visit Momo, since the Time Thieves are expanding and expanding by telling one terrible lie to the people;
All the time you’ve saved will be returned one day.
The people believe this, and all joy and time disappear from their lives since they work they asses of to accumulate time to enjoy it…later.
Momo finds out that this is a lie. The Time Thieves are actually stealing the time of the people. She tries to warn the adults, but they’ve no time to listen. She only reaches the children.
Meanwhile, the grey men have a meeting to discuss how to get rid of Momo, a thread to their created illusion. They decide to intimidate and buy off her friends so that Momo will remain alone. They make Gigi a famous storyteller. Now he has no time anymore to visit Momo. Bebbo ends up in jail but can buy back his freedom to see Momo by promising to collect 100.000 hours for the timesavers.
Bebbo loses his joy in his job. He is now frantically cleaning like a madman, hoping to meet Momo again, one day.
There is so much wisdom in this one simple principle.
The promise the system made you that all your collected time will be yours at the end of your working years, is a lie. You have given it away for the grey men in suits to grow their cigars.
Without these cigars, they die.
Your time is the freedom of the Time Thieves.
Ninety-nine percent of people on earth work, and work, and work giving their precious time and life energy away to the ones who, in fact, steal their time.
One girl against the timesavers
Momo doesn’t give up. She gets guidance. The turtle Kassioppeia appears, leading her to master Hora, the time creator. They decide to stop time, and in this instant, Momo needs to close the door of the bunker where the grey men come from and where they hide their time flowers, created from all the time they stole from the people.
Momo is able to move since she got one time flower from master Hora to execute her task.
She succeeds, the grey men can’t access their vault and vanish. All the time collected in the stolen flowers returns to the people.
Men and Women regain their joy and time and gather back again around Momo. She continues to listen to her friends. Gigi is freed from the burden of stardom and Bebbo takes one stone, one meter, one pavement and one street at the time again being profoundly happy.
All people have all the time in the world again.
The result?
Connection, joy, wisdom, and time for each other. Something we call abundance in these times.
How can you, we, get there?
The Best Way to Buy Back Your Time is by Not Giving it Away in the First Place.
Realize that grey men with big cigars are stealing your time, all for themselves. Break through the illusion that you need to save your time to have more of it later.
You have all the time in the world. Right now. Spend it well. Momo is showing you how.
Lucien Lecarme
(first published on Medium)