Life Is Short Vs You Still Have Time.
The battle of using Time as a motivator
There are two truisms at play in this world.
The one that says we need to make the most of every moment we have, and the one that says it’s not too late to achieve what you want in life.
One can feel like a pressure that encourages you to hurry up and to be less wasteful.
The other invites a sense of patience. It tells you to have faith that things will work out.
Both have your future happiness at heart.
Both are designed register with you at some deep level.
Both employ time as the tool to inspire action.
But they employ different tactics. One requires urgency, the other requires trust.
So is time scarce, or is it abundant? Is life short or do you still have time?
It’s less a question of which is right, more a case of which ones serves you best.
Which if any, is going to drive you to take action?
Let’s hear the case for each:
Life is short
Almost every day we encounter evidence that life is indeed short.
A story in the news about tragedy or misfortune. A child with terminal illness. A natural disaster which has cut lives indiscriminately. A freak sequence of events in a road accident, or the lessons and wisdom of those in their final days.
Even for those who’s life runs its natural course, life is still regarded as precious and painfully short.
The vague but uncomfortable knowledge that life could be snapped from us at any moment is one that should dominate our thoughts and drive our behaviour. But somehow for many of us, it doesn’t. We push it to the back of our minds and bury the discomfort.
The phrase “live every day as if it were your last” is an irritating friend of Life is short.
The reality for most of us, is that abiding by this philosophy is absurd. Even if it was your last day of being alive, there’ll still be a traffic jam to sit in, a kids packed lunch to prepare or a wash load to do.
Our days will always be full of the mundane. And yet it remains true. Life is short.
If we are fortunate enough to not have life cut short by illness or accident or even by our own stupid behaviour, its length can still feel inadequate.
Consider that you might spend your first 30 years learning how to be you. It can take this long to understand who you are and what you want.
You may even spend another 10 years figuring that out, or trying to untangle yourself from things which (with hindsight) you didn’t want.
Tick tock.
Then, depending on what your dreams entail, your last 30 years may be restricted by your ageing biology.
For some, all of a sudden life looks really short:
Not all lives follow the above scenario. People can and do achieve enormous success and fulfilment in their youth or in later life. But the journey of life is a journey of change.
Throughout our lives we experience multiple shifts. Changes in our priorities, changes in the people who surround us, changes in our identities and roles and changes in our interests and world around us. What we consider a life well lived inevitably changes in parallel.
Life is short is also subjective. Each of us will interpret this widely accepted call to action in different ways.
Maybe it’s too short to not see the Pyramids. Maybe it’s too short to stay in that job which pays the bills but no longer lights you up. Maybe it’s too short to not set up that business, or too short to not forgive and make peace with someone after a feud. Perhaps its too short to not leave (or start) a relationship with someone. Or even just too short to let the opinion or words of someone else hurt you.
Big or small, we all have our own very personal reasons why Life is short sends a shiver down our spines. The first step for us all, is identifying what our reasons are.
So take a moment. What does Life is short conjure up for you?
Got it? Let’s move on.
You still have time
We all know of people who have made courageous and dramatic changes in their lives. We all know stories of people who found success in their later years.
The stories of couples in their 80’s finding love. Of authors, actors, inventors and artists who get their big break after years of anonymity and hard work. Of people who absentmindedly followed the funnel of education into a respectable job only to break free to do the thing that deep down they always knew they wanted to do.
Great things are possible. You can achieve the things you most want in life. You can become the person you want to be. The thing that gets you most excited can be the thing you do all the time. You are more capable than you can possibly imagine. You can live your life in such a way that you are not nagged by regret when it all comes to a close.
And yet like life is short, we somehow become immune to the message. We know it’s true yet we often choose instead to ignore the message and carry on doing the same things.
You still have time also brings with it a deceptive blanket of reassurance. It implies that good things come to those who wait. That patience is a virtue. That it will all work out in the end. It says there’s no use throwing in the towel, that the fat lady has not yet sung.
And of course it is true. You do still have time. But it’s a message which is too weak to shake you.
Luckily, you still have time has a more forceful friend; it’s never too late
It’s never too late (to achieve the things you want to achieve in life), appears at first glance to be the same message. But look closely and it’s delivered with a poke.
It’s never too late assumes that you’re going to hear these words, and then start. Now.
If you don’t do anything with it’s never too late, you may well find, it’s too late.
Whether it’s Life is short or whether it’s You still have time which ignites the fire within you, either is fine. But only you can decide which is the better fuel.
The unpredictable fear of early death is just as capable of driving you as the knowledge that there is enough of a runway ahead of you to take flight.
Do you like sticks? Or do you like carrots?
The deciding factor in whether you live a proud life is not which motivator you choose, but what you choose to do with it.
Making it count
It will come down to the questions you pose yourself, and the decisions you make. Every hour and every day.
Questions like:
- What is important to me?
- What do I want?
- How am I going to get from here to there?
- What does there look like?
- What things might get in my way?
- How will I move past those obstacles?
- What do I need to stop doing?
- What do I need to start doing?
- Who do I need alongside me?
- What knowledge and skills do I need to acquire?
- How will I gain that knowledge and those skills?
- What habits do I need to create to keep me on course?
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. -Jim Rohn
We all know that life is precious just as we all know that we are capable of achieving anything we put our minds to. The reason why we bury the discomfort of not living the life we want, is because making it happen is hard.
It’s far easier to experience life as the relentless cycle of activities between sleeps. But if we don’t pay close attention to the underlying direction we’re taking and frequently correct our course, then we will find ourselves wandering.
Close to where I live, there is a path which hugs the river and offers spectacular walks through the countryside. The path is paved, but if you don’t look where you are going and absentmindedly allow yourself to stray from the path, it soon gets bumpy and you end up with dog shit on your shoes. It is the same with life.
If you ask yourself the right questions, whether through a daily journal practice or routinely taking time to reflect and redirect, your life can be a life fulfilled.
The pursuit of living a life you want, will be almost entirely dependent on your ability to know where it is you want to go and creating habits which help you get there.
Remember, life is short and you still have time. But you do need to start now.
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About the Author — Kevin Rozario-Johnson
By day, I am a service manager and leader working within the mental health sector. By night I am a writer, coach and founder of nimbla which helps people who are stuck in their careers get unstuck and equip themselves for the changing future of work.
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