“All this talk of getting old It’s getting me down, my love”
The Verve 1997.
Wherever you look there is always a reminder that time is ticking away. Song lyrics, advertising, the need for pension planning. All of these are constantly nagging at us to remind, cajole or influence us in some way.
The Stoics used the term Momento Mori, literally ‘remember that you have to die’ in order to make sure we take positive action towards something every day, every moment. To remember that there is no escape from this life alive.
Doesn’t matter what your beliefs are about death or what happens after, this life will be over at some point and you will move on to something or nothing.
Each day resets, each day our body ages and we become less able to do the things we want to do, youth is wasted on the young it seems. Just when we know everything our bodies decide that it’s time to start slowing us down.
This is life.
Meanwhile, everything continues working as it did. The universe keeps building and destroying in real time. The change is all around us. Nothing is permanent. God indeed will smile when we start to make long investments. Of course God will be thinking in terms of billions of years, we may be thinking about the next ten.
And this is the thing we forget, when we get caught up in the next drama, the next thing to distract us – we are only one part of something that is much bigger. In the scheme of things, when you fuck up. You make a mistake, it’s an insignificant blip in a far larger machine, but to you it’s a massive error.
Let me assure you it’s not.
In the scheme of things, in universe time – no one cares, few will notice.
We have a fear about it. A fear of messing up. A fear of getting it wrong. We don’t do stuff, we don’t take the action because of a fear factor. That fear factor is mostly not real and whilst it may be big in your mind – in the scheme of things is tiny.
As our life clocks keep ticking we don’t take the action, we don’t do things we’d like to do, want to do and then there is this talk of getting old, a feeling that life is passing us by.
You and I both have it, it’s not yours its ours.
The same thing holding you back, stopping you. Is the same thing that works against me, every now and again we push back against it, we speak to that boy or girl we like, we go and see the movie, read the book, send the CV.
We take the micro actions that prove we can do this stuff, show us that we don’t die, its not that difficult. Mistakes are made, we learn, and sometimes that causes anxiety – a worry about something that may not happen- forward thinking of the worst kind.
But we know that if we make that call, send that CV. Speak to that potential life partner and we’re rejected we don’t die. We live to fight another day – we move in the right direction.
This is how lives are lived, how we learn, how we develop into well rounded adults. By me writing this short article, by me sending that CV, by you telling the boss to do one – to remember that our lives are short and we come this way only once.
That we don’t get a chance to relive it, to do it all again. The last second, the time you’ve spent reading this, the time you spent arguing with that idiot on social media never ever comes back.
Being mindful of your time, not living your life on your terms means you will never have time or the inclination to do those things that you want – there will be always be a time suck – another distraction. The clock is ticking you are getting older. Eventually you will be faced with a the option of death. Nothing else, there will be nothing else in front you. No chance to make a decision, a choice of that or something else.
Between now and then you can decide what you need to do. Which means you need to decide what it is you want and how you want to do it. But don’t hang about.
Tik Tok.
When you are ready to get a shimmy on with some of this, then get in touch. Time Management Help.