Irish time

A couple of times this winter I had the pleasure of having my husband home with me due to snow storms. His boss just told him to work from home that day.
Stay home on a snow day? If you're not a teacher that is kind of a big deal. The show must go on - with or without snow. The market can't stop.

It can't?

Really?
Why? Why can't we take it easy on a stormy day and stay home and take care of our driveways and not risk getting into an accident on the highway? Why can't we take it easy and close down on that day?
Oh, yes. That's right. It's because we will not make as much money.

Last year, when we were in Ireland we are majorly disturbed by the stores closing time. By five, six in the evening they were closing up for the day. On Sundays we saw almost nothing open.
True we were not on majorly touristy areas,  but we did go to a beach site, with souvenir stores and every thing.  It was a town called NewCastle. We were there on the day Price George was born. It was 5 pm and the sun shone bright in the sky.

and look at the stores:

No we didn't take that picture. That one is from google maps. Which is funny, because we took one that looks exactly like it. It took it at 5:30 in the afternoon, on a midsummer's day.

Yeah, wow. Those people sure don't care about making money. No wonder Ireland is so far behind America.

However - Really? Is making money really that much more important?

Those employers and employees are now free to go live their lives. They can go home to their families, spend time with their lovers, go watch the sunset at the beach, or even go do some studying  catch up on homework - instead of doing it at 2 am.

Do we really have to be the most succesful country on earth at the cost of spending extra hours with those we love?

One of the top 10 regrets of people at the end of their lives is "have worked to much". Do I want to wake up in my death bed someday and realize I spent most of my time going after something that didn't really matter? Something that didn't give me pleasure?

We only have one life to live. And so do the people we love. We control so many things, that we think we can control time. We will always have "later" and "some other day". No we won't. We don't know if we will wake up tomorrow. We don't know if we will ever see that special person again. We don't.

"We spend all of our lives dreaming, to wake up only at the end. And the truth was so different, and now there is no more time." (Racionais MCs)