Counting the Moments

When people talk about traditions they typically mean rituals established by someone many generations ago. While I respect (most) traditions of this sort, to me another kind of traditions is way more important — traditions, established by me and by those I care about. Which is why I’m writing my September 28th post, even though I’m not back yet from my self-imposed hiatus. When you do something for three years in a row, it’s a tradition.

As usual on this date, I’ve spent some time thinking — maybe a bit harder than usual — about my favorite L-word. And as usual I realized something. Don’t expect a revelation. What you are about to read is as trivial as it gets when it comes to statements about life. What makes it special for me is that now I understand it deeper than I ever have. A warning: don’t read this if you’re easily depressed. I mean it. Just stop reading right here.

Do you ever get this feeling of moments being wasted as your life passes by? It passes right in front of your eyes, in all its glory and complexity — and you can’t help, but feel that these seconds are being thrown away. You can feel your body getting older with every passing moment, you can sense opportunities being ignored, risks not taken, life not lived. There are life experts around you telling you that life is too precious to be wasted, encouraging you to live it, screaming at you about planning it, establishing bold goals, going after them with everything you’ve got, taking charge, blah, blah, blah. But what do they know? They are people just like you, and their clock is ticking just as steadily. All you know is that you have a limited number of moments in this world and you’re just not using them right. And it sucks big time.

So you just think about something else. You choose not to think about that unstoppable timer. You pretend to forget. In fact, you do forget — until next time. But there always is that next time. And you know what it is? Slavery. We’re being held hostage to our fears. Fear of not using our time wisely. Fear of wasting our life. Fear of leaving this world eventually. And this is so wrong.

It’s wrong because it actually doesn’t matter how many moments we get. Well, it sort of does, but not in the way we usually think about it. These moments are not infinite anyway. Yes, I will run out of them at some point. But precisely because of this it is so dumb to waste any one of them worrying about running out of them eventually. It may happen in 40 years or in 5 hours. Who knows. And who cares? What matters is not how many moments I have left in the bank. What matters is how I spend them. Every single one of them. As it turns out, life is not about how many. It’s about how. Instead of counting the moments I should be living them.

Just like any statement about life these are just words. But once it sinks in, all of a sudden you realize that these words bring you closer to something all us want and only few truly achieve — freedom.