The problem is we think we have time. – Buddha
The question comes down to this: How are we going to spend our time? The fact is none of us know how much we have. There’s no guaranteeing we’ll make it to ninety. There’s no guarantee we’ll have tomorrow. So what do we do with now? We do ourselves a disservice when we follow what others think we ought to be doing. Maybe we get caught up in the quest for material things, power, or prestige and in the process we lose what makes us most uniquely ourselves.
It’s important to ask ourselves who we want to be with the time we have. We can spend hours watching television, playing video games or staring down at our phone. We can easily get hung up on petty disputes or refuse to forgive and move on. In the end all of these things don’t matter. These are a waste of our precious time. Now think about who you surround yourself with, why, and what makes them interesting. What pulls us towards people is an indication of what we want to become more of, that mysterious tugging creates a clear path. There are tons of incredibly interesting people around, seek them out, learn from them, let their wealth of knowledge help you grow into yourself. Don’t waste time with small, back-biting people, they will drain you.
Read. Shakespeare, Rilke, Neruda, Marquez, Nin. Read people who’ve been on the journey you are on, they will help you uncover new threads of yourself and warn you about the pitfalls. The more we know, the more we have to share, the more connected we become. Matter to others, help others, be kind and generous with your time. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, just begin with one simple act and see how easy it is to give and how good it makes you feel. Become the person other people can’t wait to be around. Uplift others and watch what happens in your own life. These are things worthy of our time.
How about asking the hard questions. Do we really want a huge house we can barely afford, a car that makes us feel important, or working endless hours to acquire more things and live less life? Who are we buying those things for and why? Do they really matter to us or do they just keep us distracted from what we really want? Where is the perfect balance for you? Joy, meaning, and connection cannot be purchased. And although it is wonderful to have nice things they can never sustain a deep sense of contentedness. It’s much scarier to go for what calls to our soul, the stakes become higher.
Our approach to our daily round tells us everything about our self and the state of our life. Are we excited about getting up, going to work, and what the day has in store for us? Are we engaged and excited or are we sleepwalking through the whole thing, one day running into the next? How we live each moment is how we live our entire life and we have a choice to make about the content and quality.
The good news is we can decide at any moment. And if we are ready to let go of everything we thought we needed to get to what really has value for us we’ll have the kind of life that fulfills us. It may not look like what we thought, others may not approve, but none of that really matters in the end. We just have to be courageous enough to follow our heart and live a life that means something to us.
When we do we’ll get to the end of our life feeling our time was well spent.
kb
