Let’s take a look through an hourglass…

If all of your time left in life was represented as sand in an hourglass, and you could watch to see how much was left, would you live differently? Time is one of the only assets that is not able to be saved or replenished. You can never invest in more time. You can never regain wasted time. Time is a fixated unknown number, and you never know when time is up until it is too late. The phrase “killing time” is taken too lightly. The time you kill is gone forever.

Live for the just in case.

You never hear stories of healthy people living life to the fullest just in case time runs out. But you hear about cancer patients, with a known time limit, doing things that otherwise seem impossible. So why is it that we need a known limit before we take ourselves off of auto pilot? Why are so many people okay with wasting time that we don’t have? Why is the mundane what we center our lives around?

We are the species that can choose.

So many people come up with a million complaints, signifying their discontentment with life. These complaints outweigh the contentment 1 million to 1. This is the terror that we find the majority of the world submitting to. So many people live their lives walking through the motions until they get home and go to sleep. Too many times, I see someone trying to climb the mountain of society, and they don’t see how much they forgot to experience until they are at the peak and looking down at all the missed opportunities.

The greatest paradox in existence.

Its so paradoxical that humans are the most innately skilled species, yet we choose to do less than an animal. Humans are the only species in the entire world that can choose to not preform to our fullest abilities. A flower won’t choose to grow only two petals; it will grow all the petals. A butterfly won’t hesitate to fly because it is scared of heights. That’s how they are made. So why do we choose to not live and fall short? We need to live how we are made.

The reason is fear.

Fear is the most crippling entity. Perhaps one of the biggest competitors of humanity. We let fear strip us from time. We are too scared to take chances because losing time somehow is not as scary as fear. We don’t do our best because the fear of ridicule somehow is more scary than the missed chances. We have got it backwards. Losing time is much more frightening than fear. Losing a once in a lifetime chance is more crippling than any ridicule.

Your sand is slowly dwindling, but you can’t see it. Just because it is not able to be watched does not mean it doesn’t exist. Perhaps we settle with the mundane to cope with our dwindling time. But I warn you, don’t let your time run out. Don’t run to the top of the mountain without experiencing the hike. Don’t turn on auto-pilot.