Math, no one likes you…
I hear it a lot … hell, I’ve said it a lot.
There’s not much time left.
Why bother?
Why push?
Because we underestimate (GROSSLY) the value of a YEAR.
Because we underestimate (GROSSLY) the value of a MONTH.
Because we underestimate (GROSSLY) the value of a WEEK.
Because we underestimate (GROSSLY) the value of a DAY.
"I’m ____ years old. I only have a few good years left.”
Excellent!!
I’m thrilled you realize that. Now we can really tackle this problem together.
Let’s do some quick assumptions and basic math … and yes, I’m aware that assuming things makes an ass out of you and me, and that if you saw my grades in math as a kid, you wouldn’t even take my advice on simple problems.
But we’re going to call it a fun little hypothetical exercise.
It’s really just to illustrate a point that will become abundantly clear in seconds.
In this little game, we are going to presuppose that we will live to 100.
Why not, right?
But we don’t need to live to 100 to capture the benefits of this.
Inside of that year, the one we complain can hold nothing of interest for us, we get:
12 months
52 weeks
365 days
Let’s take a closer look, assuming in our frustration with the monotony of our lives, we decide to learn a new skill.
Might as well do something with our time here right?
You’re 51 and you decide you want to learn photography.
Not with your phone, but with real cameras with complicated dials and buttons.
You want to learn lighting.
You want to parlay that into a trip to the Rockies for the perfect sunrise shot of the sun coming up over a towering 14,000 foot peak.
Great.
On day 1, you sign up for a course.
It takes 90 days.
And you love it!
Love is too weak a word.
You’re enamored, enraptured, entralled, with the camera.
The whole process.
So you take another course.
Another 90 days.
The whole time you are shooting.
Every day in your free time.
You realize that maybe you can go for it. You’ve been putting in the time and now you want to book a ticket and try forthe shot.
So you fly to DIA.
And you take the shuttle to the rent a cars out in the middle of nowhere, twisting and bobbing in a cramped bus, clutching your camera case, while you try not to bump into your fellow travelers.
You drive to the mountains, taking in that first site of them up close.
Snap, snap, snap.
A life changing experience feeling them up close,
The mountains ... Earth’s way of telling you that everything’s going to be okay.
10 days out there.
And you come home empty handed.
Not completely, of course. You just didn’t get the shot that moved you to put it on the wall.
Frustrated, you go home and take photography class #3.
And you fly back out after your 90 days.
And you nail it!!!
You’re 200 days into the year and you’ve captured the perfect shot, a dreamy little number that you stare it on your wall, aware of what you put in to get it.
And you think to yourself…oh, well, I’ve still got 165 days to go in this year.
Let’s keep going!
Class #4.
Class #5
Another trip.
A trip after that.
Practice makes perfect.
Actually, practice has made you pretty damn good!
And it took less than a year to do it.
Now you’re 52.
So…now what.
I’ll paint this year, I need a change.
You get the point, right?
What I am saying is that when we limit our time left or say there’s nothing great waiting for us out there, we are GROSSLY underestimating the value of a day.
The value of a week, a month, a year.
We can devote any one of those units to something.
Many things.
It’s wide open!
So please, please, please, stop saying that there’s no time left.
Please stop saying that it’s not worth starting something new.
Take today and jump.
Jump into the unknown, for the first time in forever, or for the first time since yesterday.
Find a new passion, a new goal, a new dream.
Do it because you have all the time in the world.
EO-Live a Life Worth Watching