Stirring Point

The days fall like dominoes, spilling one into the next. We stand beyond them like spectators, watching time toppling along an infinite string. These are our days. They belong to us, but we treat them as if they’re perpetual. We know they can be snatched away, yet we do little to change our behavior.

It’s not that we’re purposefully wasting time. We wake up and race toward the day’s accomplishments like a podium awaits beyond a finish line. Accomplishments hold purpose, but we treat our tasks as if they’re something to conquer. We dash past huge chunks of our lives in pursuit of an end, watching time fall like a casualty to our sprint. Time is one of our greatest gifts, yet we often treat it as if it’s a burden to overcome. What do most of us want in the end? More time. What do we do with the time we have now? We rush past it.

It’s our use of time that matters—how we act on and in our time once we engage in any effort. Living within our days feels unnatural. It forces us to find meaning in what seems like mundane tasks. Dishwashing, boorish errands, medical appointments, training runs, etc. What meaningful joy can they bring? 

There’s no right way to spend our time, although there are some general ideas we agree on. Today is the youngest we’ll ever be again. Day-to-day aging feels imperceptible due to time’s slow rolling increments. Lost days squandered to distractions cannot be recaptured. Straining for meaning in every moment is exhausting. These ideas suggest a middle ground. We should be aware in the present. This way, our moments aren’t lost to the promises of the future. If life is a race to the next benchmark, we’ll fail to notice the beauty on our run. If we think only about what needs to be accomplished, we ignore the splendor of the steps taken along the way. All that “stopping to smell the roses” talk? It’s a bludgeoned cliche, but it packs a ton of truth.

We treat everything as if it builds up to something, yet what we actually have are a series of moments that string together like a narrative arc. Life is clumsy, and we spend much of it looking in the wrong direction. We teach our kids to search for meaning in places like family and self-determination, but we push them toward economic pursuits and external validations that eclipse these things. Economic pursuits shouldn’t be ignored in today’s world, but they should be balanced to ensure what matters is not lost at their expense. Our decisions in life tip the scales to or away from what’s most meaningful, and we have only so many days to reverse their weight once we’ve fumbled.

We can’t stop the days from falling, and we’ll never recapture the time we’ve lost. What we can do is retrain, refocus, and repurpose the way we spend today and beyond. Time is not a burden to bear until the next holiday arrives or benchmark is measured. Nor is our time in some endless supply. We know this biologically and we understand it intellectually. It’s our awareness and action that needs adjustments. Let’s do something about it while we still can.