Killing time.

It’s perfectly natural and understandable to want to ‘kill time’. We get bored, we want the next thing to come sooner, and we aren’t always as disciplined as maybe we ‘should’ be. I’m not trying to berate you, or myself, but I am trying to remind both of us just how temporary our lives are. Every once in a while we need a wake-up call to look around and remember that life is happening now - and that moment is fleeting.

That was really dramatic. Well, this is a dramatic topic, honestly; there really isn’t any other way of discussing it. So either stop reading now, or get on board. This won’t be a long post, but it’s going to be a ride, I’m not going to lie…

Still here? Cool - let’s go.

Everyone dies.

We all have a limited number of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds on this earth. There is no denying that; there is no escaping it. Which leads me to my next point: Each of our clocks is counting down at every moment.

Look at it like this: Assume just for the sake of this concept that the moment of your death is pre-determined. That would mean that the time you have remaining alive has a definitive number. That number is counting down to zero and there is no stopping it. This is not meant to be scary, so please just stay with me in the concept for another few lines.

So you have this countdown. It tells you exactly how long you have left. It tells you how long you have left to experience life, to do the things you always said you were going to do, and to experience and appreciate the people around you. Don’t focus on it too long, but at the same time remembering that it’s ticking away might make us appreciate how fleeting and rare our time alive really is.

Now, imagine someone who’s looking at their countdown and they see a relatively small number ever-shrinking. Desperate as they may be, there is no stopping that number from reaching zero. There is no force which can stop death. This number will reach zero - and it will reach it, for them, soon. This person could be the richest person in history, the most powerful leader on earth, or the most influential figure in any culture - any of them would gladly give anything in their power for a few more moments.

They say one of the most influential aspects in attributing value is scarcity. Nothing is more scarce to a person’s life than their own fleeting time alive. Nothing is more precious than time to the living dying. Yet, we all forget that we are all - every one of us - barreling towards that moment when our own countdown will reach zero… the only thing is we don’t get to see that countdown, so we assume it’s always got plenty of numbers left on it…

So you’ve got a few hours before your next ‘thing’. What are you going to do with that time? I certainly hope you aren’t thinking of killing it.