I’ve tried to write this post about three or four times.
Each attempt started strong. I had a point, a great story to run beside it, and a thrilling conclusion the likes this poor blog has never seen. And then I scrapped it. Once, with a sigh, and then three more times with increasing desperation. I’ll admit that I’m a perfectionist, but never to this extreme. So what’s going on here?
Here’s the deal, folks: this is the most important thing I’ve ever tried to say. Important to me, at least, and hopefully important to you too, so I’m going to give it one more try. Trust me when I say that my fingers are crossed that everything flows like magic from here.
Ready for this? Hit the jump for the one and only thing we will ever need.
Time.
Half of you probably guessed that. The other half probably went with money and are too busy rolling their eyes at my optimism to read this next line. Okay, sure, you need money. Cash is good. Dollars and euros and pesos are pretty important in their own right, but I’d counter by saying that you can do some pretty amazing things without spending a single one of them.
You need time. Time for you, time for yours, and time for every remarkable thing you’ve ever wanted to do in your entire life.
There’s this strange compulsion to buy, buy, buy in the modern world. We’re never happy with what we own. We see something new and we want it. We see something bigger and we want it. We abandon our normal-sized homes for two-story houses, upgrade to a bigger, faster car, and celebrate every holiday by giving out stuff by the handful.
We want more. Bigger is better. And so on and so forth in an this exhausting parade of pointless purchases.
But things have changed. We’ve caught on, slowly but surely, that we don’t need stuff. We don’t need things or objects or products to carry on happy, healthy lives, and dozens of us at a time are now trying to get rid of that stuff as fast as humanly possible. Call it a fad, but minimalism — better than most philosophies I can think of — has caught on to the core struggle of modern existence.
We’re told that we want more, more, more, but every single one of us knows, deep down, that we already have enough. Why? We have time. Every single one of us possesses it in abundance, and in such incredible quantities that frankly we come away looking like hoarders.
Let’s say you live a strong, healthy life to the age of ninety. That nets you an astonishing 32, 872 days to make your mark up on this world. That’s incredible. That’s amazing. We have thirty-two thousand opportunities to do something fun, wonderful, or just a little bit insane, and we have the mental capacity to remember every single one of them.
But we don’t. We forget about time. We forget about how many seconds we possess and how rich we are as a result. We fall prey to society’s never-ending story: buy, buy, buy, but deep down we all realize that we can’t ever purchase the one thing we really want. You can’t buy time.
That’s the daily struggle, the constant war between our inner and outer worlds. We’re told to want more and more, to upgrade and renew and lust after that sixty-inch HDTV, but we can never buy more of the one and only thing we truly need.
It’s a little depressing, in a sense. But that’s okay! That’s fine, even. Because we still have 32,000 chances to save the world, each and every one of us, and we have the ability to take a step back and realize that we don’t need much more. Hell, we don’t want more. We’ve got plenty, thank you very much, and we’re so incredibly excited to make the best of it that we possibly can.
So what are you waiting for?
You have the one thing you need. Spend it wisely, from here on out, and on the things that genuinely matter to you. You have an abundance of minutes to work with, so make them count the best way you possibly can.
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How do you spend your time? What’s the one way you spend your minutes that is so incredibly and uniquely you? Let me know!
And thanks for reading! If you like what’s going on around here, then why not have free updates sent directly to your inbox or to your RSS reader? I really appreciate it!
17 Comments »
I'm a writer, minimalist, and health dork with three goals in mind: to teach you how to lose weight, move more, and be happier by living a simple, natural life. It works. Like what you read here? Get 3NL delivered straight to your inbox!
Matt,
You did a great job on this post. It did flow well!
I agree – time is precious indeed! The truth is that many of us will not have those 32,000+ hours of time. Death is certain, we just don’t know when or how. It could come sooner than we think. So that makes time even more precious! When we remember death we get a great kick in xyz to use our time wisely and appreciate every moment we have.
All the best!
Thank you, Sandra.
It’s a sad thing, but you’re right. Many of us won’t have 32,000+ chances to change the world, and even those that do might not be able to appreciate that fact. The threat of death, however, tends to whip the living into shape pretty quickly! As morbid as it sounds, death might be our greatest asset here — the knowledge that we don’t have all the time in the world to just play around might help change minds pretty quickly.
Got a huge ‘Wake Up Call’ this weekend about Time, when my 48yo bro was diagnosed with a brain tumor that’s growing rapidly and daily diminishes his cognitive and motor skills. Everything un-important dropped by the way side. Much easier to focus now on ppl than stuff. At least at the present time. I know habits seem to creep right back in, but life’s reminders or posts like you wrote are needed to remind myself of what really counts.
I’m so sorry to hear that, Karen. I’m not much of a prayer, but I’ll send some positive energy in your brother’s direction with the hopes that he makes a safe recovery.
Like you said, it’s easy to forget what matters in life. That’s usually when we get thrown a curve ball, too. But I know that this experience will help both you and your brother really start to focus on your time and make every day count, and I wish you the best of luck in doing that.
Great post.
And you’re so right! Although time is something that worries me a lot. Although I’m “only” 27, I get paranoid that I’m going to one day be on my deathbed thinking ‘oh, I wasted the time I had. I could/should have done so much more with my life!’. When I’m not working, I try and spend as much time as I can with my husband and doing the things I love, in (a possibly lame) attempt to not waste the time I have. EG: I want to write a book and I’m 20 000 into doing as such. I have a long way to go, but hey, I figure 20 000 is better than none!
You’re also very right about the buying thing. I’ve been conscious of that for a couple of years, now. And the frustrating thing is that I always find myself wanting more stuff, even though I know I’m just another victim to someone else’s marketing ploys! *Tries not to focus too much right now on her iPhone 4*.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I want the iPhone 4 pretty badly.
And I don’t think you have anything to worry about! It sounds odd, but just the fear that you could be wasting your time is kind of a good thing to have. It really keeps you sharp, I think, and constantly forces you to reevaluate what you’re doing with the intention of making it as enjoyable as possible. There’s no way to know what you’ll be saying on your death bed, of course, but I think you’re doing a bang up job at the moment just by writing a novel and enjoying time with your husband as much as possible.
That’s the beauty of it, too: how you spend your time is completely subjective. I tend to get restless unless I’m creating something, but I can also spend hours getting lost in books, movies, games, etc. Sure, they might not be the most productive use of my time, but if I’m enjoying myself then there isn’t too much to complain about.
Hey Matt,
Nice post! I saw a documentary earlier this week about young people who value time over money. They had a diagram of how much free time different socioeconomic groups have, and apparently ‘millionaires of free time’ are lottery winners, grand heirs and… the unemployed. Needless to say which group is the easiest to get to
What I find disturbing is that many people truly don’t seem to value time. I’m sure you’ve met folks who dread the idea of having too much free time – they ‘wouldn’t know what to do with it’. When on vacation, these people start craving back to office because ‘doing nothing’ gets tiring after a while.
I think it’s the social conditioning. The stereotype of an unemployed person who spends his days alone in a shabby apartment, watching daytime telly and drinking beer couldn’t really be further from the truth, but many people actually believe that they will go to a full passive mode if they don’t have a job to ‘keep them in line’.
Being told for years that unemployment is the worst thing that can happen to you, I was a bit surprised to find out that on my little sabbatical earlier this year, I was doing better than ever! People would compassionately pat me in the back and tell it’s going to be alright, when I tried to explain them that I’m super happy with all the free time I have now. They just wouldn’t have any of it. ‘He must be really depressed without a job and is putting on a fake happy face for us… poor guy’.
How do you deal with this kind of attitude, Matt? It scares me sometimes how little people seem to want from their lives…
Hey Miika!
Mind sending me the link to that documentary? It sounds like pretty fascinating stuff.
I think you nailed it when you wrote this: “…full passive mode if they don’t have a job to ‘keep them in line.’” That’s such a weird thought, isn’t it? But it’s a common one, given all the language that tends to come attached to the work force. A job will “keep you in line.” You need steady employment to “pay your dues to society.” Everyone has “responsibilities,” and the unemployed are just shirking them for as long as possible. It’s ridiculous. But it’s also indicative of the modern mentality that you described, where people assume unemployed workers are just lazing the days away with one hand on the remote and the other in a bag of chips.
Somewhere, somehow, we got the idea that we need a nine to five in order to stay on the straight and narrow. You and I both know that’s not the case. This isn’t to say that work is bad or anything like that, but it does seem a little depressing, in retrospect, that so many people devalue their lives outside the office. Shouldn’t your free time be the most precious and valuable of all? Shouldn’t your life outside work be the one with the most significance? The most impact?
But it doesn’t happen like that, sadly, as you and I both know. And it’s difficult to handle, especially when someone is well-entrenched in the idea that steady employment equals contentment. There’s one question I like to ask this sort of person: “what do you do in your free time?” More often than not I’ll get a mumble about watching TV or just snoozing on the couch. It’s a sad answer, I think, but a common one, especially when office work can so completely drain you after a long day.
I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with it, honestly.
The best answer I have now is to lead by example – to say that “oh, I’m blogging at the moment and writing for a couple of different sites. I’m thinking of starting a new novel, too, and taking classes on web design.” That’s a remarkably different answer from just coming home to crash in front of the TV, and maybe it’ll help people realize two things: that you can do so many valuable things with every spare moment, for one, and subsequently that being unemployed offers you endless opportunities to try and enrich your life. 
Thanks so much for stopping by! And for the great comment! I’m going to have to check out your blog, as I think we’re probably running with some very similar ideas.
Ah, I’m just too nice in person, whenever I meet these lemming types I just let them rave about their work or whatever, and nod my head as if I agreed with everything they say. I think my action plan is to do something so epic that I’ll catch their attention first, THEN I’ll say what I think
What comes to the documentary, unfortunately it’s only in Finnish
It’s funny – one of my blog readers guided me to you after she read my post yesterday on…Time. Yep..Time. Liked your article and will be back.
Thanks for stopping by! Apparently we’re sharing ideas without even knowing it.
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I agree that time is a very valuable thing in USA (this has come up as the number one cultural value in this country). I also agree that N. Americans put a lot of emphasis on how valuable their time is and try to save it and guard it as if it was gold while at the same time racing around filling up their schedules because looking busy gives one power and status (the opposite is true in some countries where leisure is a sign of someone having reached high status). For me, health is the number one thing I need most without which having time is of lesser value if poor health means my body won’t let me do what I want to do in life. Too man people die too early before their time is up so I say, take of your health first:)
Time and health. So true. Love your blog!
“Hurry hurry rush rush, you’re running out of time…”
has been the insidious whisper in my head since I was small. Sometimes it screams through me, and panic takes flight…and other times it’s calmer.
I take comfort in the fact that I’m walking a tightrope toward improving the world, scattering seeds of change along the way.
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