Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Time really flies by for me. I mean, every day just blows by – I get to the end of the day and it seems like I just woke up. For me it’s every day, too. I don’t remember my life ever feeling so out of control in that aspect. I think there were periods of my life when time seemed to really drag on… like it was standing still. That hasn’t happened to me for years now, and I think every day time seems to move faster, too. I guess in the past I always thought it was because of getting older – that creates a natural sense of urgency. Like – when I was young I just figured I’d have time to do everything and I’d live forever. Now I don’t assume anything – there’s a greater sense of urgency to get things done. But this week I was thinking about it, and it also has to do with how our lives are set up, I think. Because for many older people their days drag by. They have nothing to do, no family or friends… nursing homes are full of lonely people with little to live for… can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feed themselves… how fast are their days going by?… not very fast at all I’d imagine. It’s very sad to me. When mom was in a nursing home I’d look around and wonder “what were their lives like?”… so many people never had any visitors, or if they did if was briefly and only on holidays. And at some point they were probably all healthy vibrant people who lived, and loved and contributed to society in some way… now all they have is their caregivers. This is why I think the people who can do that work – and I have a couple friends who seem to love it – are very special people. They bring a ray of sunshine into lives that are full of despair. I realize this is not the case for everyone in that situation, but my mom was in a nursing home for over 12 years and I’ve seen it firsthand. Once life gets to that point, there isn’t much you can do. But today we are all free agents. We are almost always free agents in every aspect of our lives. We create our present moments with the decisions we make. And we never know when we’ll get blindsided and have some decisions taken away from us. None of us is safe from disaster. Mom was in a nursing home because we ate at the wrong restaurant on the wrong day and she got ecoli poisoning. She lived the last 12 years of her life in a nursing home after that. Didn’t exactly see that coming. So, knowing our time is limited, how do we spend the time we have? Doing something we hate just to make money?… life is way too short to do that for anything but a short period of time. We’ve all had to do it at some point, but really – find a way to make a living doing something you love. Days will blow by. What about your free time? Do you have things you love to do, and if so – are you pursuing them? Why not? At this point in my life, I have a lot going on and it’s pretty much all awesome, so time flies by… because I’m loving every minute of it. It can be somewhat overwhelming trying to keep up with everything, but like I said – we’re all free agents. If I want to slow down, I could stop doing a few things. If you find yourself bored a lot – well… wow – there are many things you can choose to do every single moment of every day. We have options. Being bored is an option I gave up on long ago. Fill your moments with people and activities you love and your days will fly by. And you’ll get to the end and say “I lived the best life I could. I was happy. I contributed a lot to society, to my family and my friends. I left the world a better place than I found it. And my life blew by.” There’s an epitaph we could all be proud of.
