If your life is made up of the time you exist on this planet that implies that time equals life. Does that mean how you spend your time defines your life? What are some of the things that are generally done by people all over the world that consume most of their time? Of course different peoples focus on diverse activities but the following list of activities is widely accepted as what makes up most of our lives.

Sleeping, depending on your age, tops the list. People from various parts of the world put different emphasis on sleep. Some cultures value it so much they insert ‘siestas’ in the middle of the working day while others prefer night and day with hardly any time set aside for sleep. Wherever you hail from, you will agree with me that a sizeable chunk of your life is spent sleeping whether you want it or not. 229,961 is the estimated number of hours a normal person is likely to spend asleep should they live to be about seventy - eight (78) years.

Eating is another time-consuming activity. The preparation of food and the associated activities done for the different meals in some places takes up most of the day and a good part of the night too. Then comes the actual sitting down or standing up (depending on where you are) to partake of the meal three times a day a day (minimum). In some places, since eating is the highlight of the social day, everybody must be seated down at the table before the meal starts. That takes time!

And then comes the whole time favorite, working! Work has became such priority that one’s whole life maybe devoured up by it. This is especially true in cultures where work is regarded as a virtue. So there is no place for a non-working person in the social setup! In other parts of the world, people work their entire life until their drop down dead, no holiday or vacation, no weekends just work all the time! You will have worked ninety thousand, three hundred and sixty hours (90,360) by the time you are sixty five (65) that is assuming you started working in your early twenties(20).

Watching TV takes the next position in claiming our time and our lives. Surfing the internet and social media have became the ultimate time consumers! The million franc question is; how do you spend your life?

Lois Nakibuuka is an educator and counsellor