Til You Can't

The essence of life cannot be found in the minutes, hours, or days that we have. We all have a different amount of time and it isn't given to us for consumption, but for contribution.  As we look back at our journey, we will not see time, rather only the moments that we made along the way.  These are the steppingstones along our path that we leave for others to remember us by and follow.  

Life is series of moments and the quality of attention we give each one determines the quality of our lives.  We often miss cherished moments due to the fast pace of daily living.  It is important to slow down and remember how precious it is to live and love.  

Transcript

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And welcome up to film station in the Balapot. Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on when and where you're tuning in. This is episode 55 of the Blue Collar Executive Podcast, and I am your host, Louis Tolby Jr. What is life about? I once heard an older gentleman say, by the time I figured out what life was about, it was time to go. He never shared his findings with me, but it is certainly something that we all ponder. So I'll share with you what I truly believe in my heart in this episode. Let's go. Albert Einstein studied the concept of time for most of his life, and the best he could ever come up with was calling it an illusion. And when you think about it, time really is an arbitrary construct. I mean it's our way of making sense of growing up or growing old. However, I don't think it's relatable to the meaning of life. I don't believe life is made up of seconds, minutes, days, or years. I don't believe that because we all get different amounts of those. I believe the meaning of life is found in the moments. When we reflect back on our lives, all we'll remember is the moments. Good or bad, those moments shaped how we got to where we are today. It is those moments that fill the path when we reflect on the journey behind us. My kids are all grown now, but when they all come over and we're sitting around, we talk about the moments, the wonderful memories, and I thank God for every one of those moments. And I regret the opportunities that I missed to make others. Last week I was on a hotel elevator with a young couple, and they had a little boy and girl who appeared to be about five years old. Well the little boy bumped into the girl and she started crying. I could tell the mom was embarrassed as she scolded the boy and made him apologize. She looked at me and said, I am sorry. I just smiled at her and said, You're going to miss this one day. She said, Am I? As the elevator door opened on my floor, I stepped off and turned and looked at her and said, I know you can't see it now, but I promise you will miss this. I know in that moment Mom was embarrassed, frustrated, tired, but someday she will look back and smile at that moment. Every moment in our life is what makes up our journey. Some are good, bad, happy, sad, but they all matter. They are all stones that we use to form our path. And when we look back on our journey we will cherish every one of them. We can never step back on them, but without them we would never be where we are. So every day we wake up we have to keep stepping forward until we can. God gave us today to lay another stone. Don't waste it with distractions, but embrace it. Think about when you're with family or friends reminiscing about something in the past. Precious memories. How bad would it be if you missed it because you had to check your social media? I promise that you will never reminisce about the time that you all sat around and stared at your telephone screens. Let me share some scary stats with you. We all get twenty four hours in a day. I mean there's no way that any of us could get a second less or a second more. The hands on the clock never stop. What we can individually control is what we do with every one of those eighty six thousand four hundred seconds we get each day. And yes, I did use a calculator for that. So let's look at what most of that time is spent on. The average American spends eight to twelve hours per day working. So let's use the lower number of eight. And then let's add an hour for the morning when we have to get up and get ready and get our coffee and then drive to work, and then we'll throw an hour for the drive home. So for simple math purposes, let's just call it ten hours per day at our jobs. Now almost everyone in the world now has a mobile phone. More than five billion people own their own mobile phone. And Americans spend around 5.4 hours a day using those phones. Millennials are on their phones about 5.7 hours a day while baby boomers devote about 5 hours to their smartphones. People check their phones on average 58 times per day. I've never counted, but I would say I'm probably average. Millennials actually on average spend 48 minutes per day texting. These numbers are just crazy. But again, for simple math, let's just say five hours per day on our telephones, doing whatever. The average person sleeps approximately eight hours a night, and on average, Americans 15 years and older spend three to five hours watching TV every day. So let's just take the middle number there and call it four hours per day. So where are we at? Ten hours on the job, five hours on the phone, four hours in front of the boob tube, and eight hours in bed. That's a total of twenty-seven hours per day. Now I know some of that can overlap. So let's say half of the phone time is while you're at work. So that gets us to twenty four and a half hours per day. Hmm. We've exceeded our allotted time. Oh, but we have the weekend, you say. Well get this. The average person spends eight hours per day streaming videos on Saturday and Sunday. Now I'm not saying we all do this, just sharing the statistics. I don't spend that much time on TV, but I do spend a lot more time on work. Maybe too much. If I'm doing it just to chase a dollar, then the answer is absolutely one hundred percent yes too much. I recently saw an interview with Colonel Sanders, and he said there's no use in being the richest man at the cemetery, because you can't do any business there. Sit down and think about how much time you are spending in everything except making memories, and you may be surprised. You may realize why you don't have as many moments as you would like along your path. You know, the older I get, the more I realize how short life is, and how precious every moment is. I don't like to have regret, but when I think back of all the times that I really wasn't listening to my wife or kids, because my mind was somewhere else. I was thinking about a big project or something, and I have ADD, so it happens a lot, but I hate it. Whatever my wife or kids have to say is far more important than any reason my phone would ding or a project I have going on. I think back at all the times when I could have spent more time with my mom, but I didn't. And now I can't. I can't go back and recover those moments. I have a vivid memory when we first bought our house. We did a full remodel and I was in the basement doing drywall when my dad stopped by. He came down and told me that everything was looking good and asked if we wanted to go to one of his favorite restaurants and eat with him. I said, Dad, I really want to get this work done. He looked disappointed because he loved being with me and my wife and the kids, but he said he understood and he left. That was the last time that I had that chance. I not only robbed myself of that moment, but I robbed my kids of a moment with their granddad, who they adored. We've lived here for nearly twenty years now. That basement drywall could have waited one more day. The Book of James tells us that life is like a vapor, here one moment and gone the next. It says that we are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Sure wish I had a paid a little more attention in Sunday school. This world is so fast moving with new technology every day, but all too often it just creates more distractions from what is really important. We have to make intentional decisions to make moments. Let's not be like the guy that I started this episode with and say it's too late when we get to the end of our journey. Let's look back and smile at all the moments. Mark Twain once said, Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been. I love that. So I believe in my heart that life is about moments. And we have opportunities to make new ones every day. I don't know about you, but I'm going to try to create a lot more memories and a lot less distractions along my path. And the great news is that moments are free. They are available to us no matter where we are. The only requirement is our attention. Friends, I don't know what the secret to life is, but if I find out, I'll be sure to tell you. I do know when I'm at the end of my road, I want to have as many memories to reflect on as possible. And the best thing about memories is making them. So I'm going to cram as many moments as I can into every day, and I'm gonna do that until I can't. Well that'll conclude another episode of the Blue Collar Executive Podcast. I hope you found some value in it or at least found it entertaining. I hope your life is just full of great moments. And thank you so much for listening.