May 20, 2026
Author: Dr. Christian Jesús Hamilton Núñez
Versión en español
We live in the age of the "instant fix." We inhabit a world that offers us pills to keep us from feeling hungry, applications to save seconds, and optimization routines that promise to turn us into machines of inexhaustible performance. In this scenario, rest feels like a sin and silence like a void that must be filled. However, in the midst of this noise, a forgotten truth emerges in the pages of The Little Prince.
In his encounter with the pill merchant, the small inhabitant of asteroid B-612 confronts us with a poignant paradox: what is the point of buying time if we lose the ability to inhabit it?
Keywords: Ethics, Care, celerity, obsession, kairos.
"Good morning!" said the little prince.
"Good morning!" replied the merchant.
He was a merchant of perfected thirst-quenching pills. You take one a week, and you no longer feel like drinking.
"Why are you selling that?" asked the little prince.
"Because this saves a lot of time. According to calculations by experts, 53 minutes are saved per week.
"And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?"
"What each one wants..."
"If I had fifty-three minutes," thought the little prince, "I would walk gently to a fountain... (Saint-Exupéry, n.d., chap. 23) And you, what would you do with fifty-three minutes?
Before providing any answer, it should be noted that the ethics of care is revealed not as a management technique, but as an ethics of presence. Taking care of yourself is not "optimizing" yourself to perform better tomorrow, nor is it a maintenance task to keep running on the productivity assembly line. It is, in essence, having the wisdom to use our "53 minutes" to walk into that which truly nourishes us gently. It is understood that the source is just as important as thirst, and that the path to it is where life actually happens.
Faced with this reality, it is worth stopping and asking yourself honestly: Do you think that, in your day-to-day, you are closer to the "pill" that quickly solves discomfort or to the "source" that allows you to enjoy the process of taking care of yourself?
Fifty-three minutes is a curious figure, according to the pill dealer. It is not the roundness of an hour, which sometimes feels heavy, nor the brevity of a sigh. That's 3,180 seconds that are usually lost in the limbo of "waiting": waiting for transport, waiting for a meeting to start, or, even worse, lost in the infinite scroll of a screen.
For Martin Heidegger, time is not something we "have," but something we "are." In this light, those 53 minutes are not an empty container that we must fill with activities, but an opportunity for our existence to manifest itself without the chains of productivity. Transforming them into something meaningful implies moving from Chronos (the linear and tyrannical time of the clock) to Kairos (the opportune moment, the time of revelation and the soul), but "How to transform a chronological duration into an experience of transcendence or self-care?"
Let's visualize a scenario where a health professional works in a public health institution, to cite an example; however, it can be applied to any other profession or work activity. The health system saturated with beneficiaries will require "Express consultations" to attend to as many patients as possible; that is, the health professional faces the scenario of the "pill" (Productivity), their required goal is to achieve figures and maintain statistics, privileging quantity over quality of care. However, if a health professional becomes a "pill trader" to satisfy statistics, is it possible to maintain the ethical vocation if the system only measures what is quantifiable (number of patients) and not what is valuable (quality of the link)?
More importantly, at this accelerated pace of the institutional medical consultation, will there be any deep needs of the patient that we are ignoring when prescribing an immediate solution? Are we curing the disease or simply silencing the symptom so that the "client" does not take more time from us? The ethics of care maintains that care is a two-way street. If the health professional mechanizes their attention to buy time, what happens to their own mental health when they discover that the time "saved" is filled with emptiness and lack of purpose? Can a professional take care of the lives of others if he has given up on inhabiting his own life with pause? The parable of the glass and the water invites us to imagine that our energy, our patience, and our love are water in a glass. We spend the day handing out drops at work, to our family, to our friends, and to our problems. If we don't stop to refill that glass, we will run out sooner or later.
In this sense, the ethics of care requires that the health professional, in their daily life, always put into practice their ethical principles, along with their values, acting by example, providing education to those around them, disseminating the analysis of ethics in the organizations where they work, among their colleagues and superiors, involving all these aspects in the development of care plans. Likewise, Gilligan proposes the ethics of care as attention to the SELF to ensure survival (it also looks to oneself). Understanding that the responsibility of care includes both self and others. You have to strike a balance between power and self-care, on the one hand, and care for others on the other. Under this argument, the fundamental reality of the Ethics of Care is that what really heals cannot be easily tabulated in an Excel sheet, so in a system that forces us to run, stopping to breathe is an act of professional integrity, but how many times a day do we allow ourselves to abandon the "pill" of haste to walk, even for an instant, to the source of our own calm?
It is undeniable that we live in a culture that requires us to be productive every second; even if we have 53 minutes, our instinct tells us, "Get ahead of work" or "Clean the house." But what if those minutes were an act of rebellion against haste? In other words, what if these 53 minutes were the refuge where we stop being useful to others and start being precious to ourselves? What if we allow ourselves to visualize fifty-three ways to honor our presence? What's more, have we ever made a catalog of moments to be felt and improve our well-being?
Self-care and self-management are the processes of refilling our own glass. Without a doubt, each of us can elaborate our own string that contain 53 minimum activities that stimulate the senses, that maintain the stillness of the mind, that favor friendly movement, that stimulate connection and disconnection and that promote the pleasure of the everyday, in other words; Each of us can do an activity for every minute of that fragment of time we can enjoy, to remind us that our well-being is a priority, not a luxury. Some of these activities can be: preparing a cup of coffee or tea and drinking it without doing anything else. Walk barefoot on grass or a soft carpet. Listen to a complete playlist, from start to finish, without skipping songs. Meditate for 10 minutes using only your breath. Practice gratitude: Write down three micro-wins of the day. Look at old photos that bring back happy memories. Do gentle stretches to release tension from the neck and shoulders. Dance to a song you love in the solitude of your room. Take a short walk without a fixed destination, just for the pleasure of walking in the rain, breathing in the scent of petrichor, or doing absolutely nothing without feeling guilty about it. In a world that competes for our energy and attention, dedicating 53 minutes exclusively to what gives us peace is the greatest act of self-love you can perform. Which of these actions would you choose to spend your first 53 minutes on to pamper yourself and find peace?
We can all choose the actions that help us the most in self-care. Now, from a more transcendent perspective, it is evident that there are only 7 minutes left before the hour, which means that those 53 minutes represent the threshold of transformation. What else could we do in these 53 minutes to transcend? In 53 minutes, you can have a deep conversation that changes your relationship with someone, or it allows you to write down three pages of honest thoughts you didn't even know you had, or you can enjoy walking long enough to get your heart rate and thoughts in sync.
On this premise, we must remember every day that 53 minutes are not "dead time". They are the space between who you are now and who you could be if you decided, for a moment, to stop running. Therefore, if you have those 53 minutes to spare today, do not try to "take advantage of them". Try to inhabit them. Feel that time belongs to you, and not you to time. However, the crisis of modernity is not the lack of time, but the poverty of our presence. By trying to gain fifty-three minutes through the efficiency "pill," we have fallen into the trap of turning care—both our own and that of others—into a mechanical transaction. In the field of health, this model not only makes the patient sick by reducing him to a statistic, but also bleeds the professional's vocation, transforming the healer into a mere operator of speed.
The true Ethics of Care is, therefore, an act of insurrection against "express consultation" and accelerated living. It is the brave passage from Chronos (the time that devours us) to Kairos (the time that inhabits us). By choosing to walk gently to the source, the healthcare professional is not "losing" minutes of productivity; rather, they are gaining the necessary depth for the act of healing to regain its sacred and human meaning. Therefore, inhabiting those 53 minutes is not a selfish luxury, but a requirement for transcendence. If we are unable to recognize our own thirst and honor our own process, the care we offer the world will always be an empty reflection. The invitation remains open: in the face of the tempting offer of the pill that silences the symptom, let us always choose the long way, the one that allows us to feel the sun, the fatigue, and, finally, the freshness of the water.
Ultimately, the value of our existence will not be measured by how many tasks we manage to compress into an hour, but by the softness and awareness with which we walk towards what makes us truly human. Time is life; don't spare it, have it. And you, what would you do with fifty-three minutes? Self-care is not a luxury that you give yourself when you have time to spare; It's the investment needed to make your time meaningful.
References
- Saint-Exupéry, A. (n.d.). The Little Prince. ILCE Digital Library. http://bibliotecadigital.ilce.edu.mx/Colecciones/index.php?clave=principito&li=el_principito.html
- Heidegger, M. (n.d.). The concept of time (P. Oyarzun Robles, Trans.). School of Philosophy, ARCIS University. http://www.philosophia.cl (Original work published in 1924).
- Alvarado García, A. (2004). The ethics of care. Aquichan, 4(1), 30-39. https://doi.org/10.5294/aqui.2004.4.1.4
- Gilligan, C. (2013). Morality and Theory: Psychology of Female Development (4th ed.). Fondo de Cultura Económica.
- Serrano, M. C. (n.d.). Parable of the cup of water. Innov-arte Institute. https://innov-arte.com/articulos-coaching-pnl-hipnosis-regresiva/43-coaching-pnl/79-parabola-del-vaso-de-agua.html
Dr. Christian Jesús Hamilton Núñez is a Medical Doctor graduated from the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca and holds a Master’s degree in Bioethics. He is a member of the International Association of Bioethics and Vice President of the Oaxaca chapter of the Academia Nacional Mexicana de Bioética. He has extensive training in bioethics, medical law, human research, and biosafety, as well as experience in specialized hospital and academic committees. Email: Hamiltoncj19@gmail.com
The opinions expressed in this blog are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CADEBI. As an institution committed to inclusion and plural dialogue, CADEBI promotes and disseminates a diversity of voices and perspectives, convinced that respectful and critical exchange enriches our academic and educational work. We value and encourage all comments, responses, and constructive criticism you may wish to share.
More information:
Centro Anáhuac de Desarrollo Estratégico en Bioética (CADEBI)
Dr. Alejandro Sánchez Guerrero
alejandro.sanchezg@anahuac.mx
