A time piece

My grandmother quoted to me occasionally when I was perhaps 12 years old that,  “Time is of the essence.”  I was quite puzzled.   “What mystical profound idea is she trying to convey?”  I thought.   Recently,  I learned that this phrase carries a legal meaning for the legal profession  to the effect that some work must be done quickly.   My great grandmother, the daughter of a judge, her mother-in-law, lived next door, and perhaps this is where she learned this phrase.  This is all pure speculation on my part.  She never told me what it meant or where she learned it.

However, now, it has both a concrete and a perfectly obvious, mystical meaning.   Now it means that sometimes we have to hurry to get something done, and its clear mystical meaning is that everything that we do in any amount of time counts in the grand scheme of things.