something I just wrote for another website…Some of you may like it, others may hate it, but it is what it is…
TIME…
The average American lives 77 Years.
That is 924 Months.
28,123 Days.
675,000 Hours.
Or 40,000,000 Minutes.
If you are reading this, I am assuming you are at least 16. More than likely, you are in your 20’s or 30’s. That means that a large chunk of your 77 Years has already passed by.
I am also assuming that you spend 6-8 Hours sleeping every night, at least 40 Hours a week at work or at school or in some other fashion that is not entirely of your own accord.
Subtract the time you spend commuting, eating and prepping meals, running errands, doing housework and other daily life activities and you have even less minutes left in the bank.
After you take out all of those hours, in reality, you most likely only have approximately 1/6th of your life left to truly spend in a manner of your choosing.
This isn’t me being morbid. This is me being realistic.
You have 86,400 Seconds a day, every day, until the day you die. If you are lucky enough to not get stricken by a terminal disease, involved in a drunk driver head-on collision or become some other form of a statistic; than this is all that you get. There are no extra loans, no extensions. If you do not use the time you are given than it is gone forever. No one can give you extra time and you cannot steal it or earn it. When the clock runs out, it runs out…In the last moments of your life, you will be left staring back at the greatest gift that was ever given to you and you will have to face the cold hard truth. Did you truly “live” your life or did you just kill the time that is killing us all? Did you relish the precious seconds that you were allotted to play in this game or did you waste them lost in oblivion?
You only get one shot at this life, what will you do with the time that has been given to you?
What if you only had 10 Years left what would you do with that time? Maybe 10 Years is too much to really get this point across?
What if you get a call from your doctor tomorrow explaining that you have less than 5 years to live?
Would you quit your job and finally give the important things in your life the full attention they deserve? Would you finally take that trip to the rain forest that you always dreamed of? Would you move to the beach and surf every morning? Would you travel the world and smell the dirt in the Coliseum?
Looking back at it, how much of the time in your life has been taken up by preoccupation, worry, or old hurts that you refuse to let go? How much has been wasted spent watching television, scouring the internet or playing video games? How much more will you have to waste before you wake up and realize that this ride isn’t infinite?
Do you truly love your job? Is your love for it so strong that you can’t wait to wake up in the morning to get started on it? If this isn’t the case, why not? If you ask around you will find people every single day that got fired or quit their career and now get paid great money for doing what they love… is the salary that you receive to buy the junk that you THINK will provide you happiness really worth it? If you truly only have so many hours left, do you really want to spend them suffering through something you don’t really enjoy just to make someone else richer?
Is there something in your life that you have always wanted to do? Start your own business? Hike the Appalachian Trail? Touch God’s painted hand in the Sistine Chapel? If so, why are you waiting? Your job? The money? The time? What is it that demands your attention so greatly that when you look back on your life and say, “I wish I would have done that” that you will feel true regret for having never experienced it? What is it in your life that is so important that you have given it the right to take that experience away from you?
Imagine this: Death walks up to you…The whole black robe, blade in hand, terrifying “Death” idea that we all know…He walks up to you. He tells you that it is time…You beg him for just a little bit more and rather than smiting you he says, “Ok, I will give you 9 more years and $35,000…Don?t mess this up.” What would you do with that time and money?
Well, think of this article as DEATH because there is a disturbing statistic that the average American will spend almost $35,000 at McDonalds over their lifetime and spend almost 9 YEARS watching television…
Is either of those things worth more to you than climbing Everest or traveling the world? If the above scenario actually happened to you, I bet you would not waste that time and money on cheeseburgers and reality television… So why is it okay for you to continue to waste it in that manner right now?
I know this seems morbid, but this is a gut check. Close your eyes and imagine the person who you care about more than anything in the world. The person you would gladly give your own life to save. The person that you absolutely cannot live without. Now just imagine if I told you that you only had 2 more days with that person before they would die. As the clock ticked down you would beg for more time, just a few seconds… just a few more moments to spend so you could tell that person how much they mean to you, to just smell their hair one last time, just one more touch of their hand…
But there are no extensions. Their time is up. When death comes he will not be giving options. You had your chance, now that chance is gone and you will spend the rest of your life regretting why you wasted so much of your attention on your job or browsing the internet?
Most likely this scenario is not a reality for you. But it is extremely real to someone else…
There is an individual out there that will lose the most important person in their lives before you finish reading this sentence.
Take that in.
Take it in again. This is real life. Just because it was not you this time does not mean you are free and clear. You were just safe THIS time.
That person’s world just collapsed down all around them…And you just keep believing that this scenario will never happen to you. Given a long enough timeline, everyone will eventually wish for an extension.
Maybe 5 Years is too long of a time to really take this message to heart?What if you only had 1 year left?
If this was the last year you will ever get to spend on this Earth? Would chasing those dreams seem as impossible now? Is your paycheck really worth almost half of your time left alive? Is there something that you have to say to someone that you have been avoiding? What will you refuse to do in your last year that “is not worth your time”?
What if you only had 1 Day left. What would that day look like?
Everything up to this point in your life is nothing more than a memory. It holds no more power over you than you allow it. Everything coming up in front of you is fiction. It?s just a story you get to write with the ink of the present. The only thing we truly have is right now. And right now is ending 1 second at a time.
Time is too precious to waste. Treat today as if it was your last day and begin to work backward until you make the rest of your 77 years look the way you want them to. Live a life worth writing a book about and leave this world changed because you are gone. Do your best to not take even one hour for granted? and when you are dying in your bed, whenever that may happen to be…do so empty… Without regret, without fear and without any doubt that you EVER wasted one second of this life.
-dieEMPTY-