My mother told me of this proverb that she heard while at a funeral.

“An inch of time is an inch of gold, but you can’t buy that inch of time with an inch of gold.”

She heard this proverb when she was attending the funeral of her high school friend’s son.  The boy’s name was Jason.  She died of a drug overdose at the age of 22.  My mother told me that this was the saddest funeral she had ever attended.  Most funerals are for the elderly, who died from old age.  This funeral was extremely unfortunate because Jason was so young and his life had barely begun.  His family did not even know that he had a drug problem.  In a speech given by one of Jason’s teachers this proverb was mentioned.  The teacher talked about how wonderful Jason was and how much potential he had.  All he needed was more time, to hopefully recover from his addiction and begin his life, on a path to success.

In essence this proverb is stating that time is so precious, as precious as gold.  However, you can not earn more time like you can earn more gold.  Therefore, in reality time is more precious then gold.  Things are more valuable the rarer they are.  Gold, something tangible is highly desired because it is rare, therefore everyone wants some.  However, other things like time or love, things that are not tangible are also very rare, but are harder then gold to acquire.