Ten minutes.
Ever think about how long that is? Or how short?
If you’re excited about getting on a ferris wheel ride, ten minutes drags like Will Smith's alien in Independence Day. If, on the other hand, you're taking an exam and still have one more essay to write before the bell, the last ten minutes flies like the Concorde.
When we were young, we thought that time just went on and on; that we had "the rest of our lives" to do whatever the thing was that we wanted to do that our parents forbade. We heard the phrase "time flies” again and again, yet we didn’t heed the message. But as we grew older we started noticing the hands on the clock, now moving at the same dizzying pace as they did during a college exam. Round and round, faster and faster. And once we finally began to understand that time truly is fleeting and that there is no way to wind the clock back, we began regretting certain choices we’d made about how we spent our time, all the while clamoring toward making the most of the time we had left.
Unfortunately, time travel still isn’t real and the earth still spins in the same direction every day, so we are (mostly) stuck with the decisions we make about the how to spend our time. But each new day presents another chance to listen to our deepest, truest, innermost voice, which will tell us the right thing to do, and the right path forward. Every time.
We’ve all suffered the consequences of spending our precious time on the wrong thing, whether it’s living with the pretty couch we knew would be uncomfortable, or working overtime when we knew we should be at our kid’s soccer game. And we've all wasted time dating someone far too long, or staying in a job we should have quit, right?
But regrettable or not, our past decisions have created the kaleidoscope of us -- of who we are now. Looking back is useful, but only to examine our decision tree and and see how we got from there to here. Looking forward, on the other hand, presents the opportunity to make choices thatserve our truest purpose. But how do we know what that is?
We listen. Our inner voice is always there, telling us whether we are moving in the right direction, and whether we are living the life we are meant to live. All we have to do is listen, and then act on what we already know to be true.
My mother used to watch a soap opera with the advertising slogan, “Like sands though the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”
Turned over an hourglass lately? Imagine you did. And imagine every grain of sand is a day of your life.
Listen to yourself. Find out what's next. Then go there.
It's about time.