Life is short.
It is a saying that we so often hear and for many of us we can so easily agree with. It can make sense. The way that days can pass us by…the months…the years. It seems as if everything can just become a blur. Moment after moment rushing by as if they were a speeding train. And for those of us in recovery, we have to struggle with the harsh reality of possible years wasted and gone down the drain to the time in which we were actively involved in our addiction.
…the life we receive is not short, but we make it so…”
Seneca – On the Shortness of Life
The reality is that life is not too short. It can just seem that way through our own self-sabotage. There are 86,400 seconds in a day which equates to nearly 31.5 million a year. And what each of us must ask ourselves, is what are we doing with those millions of seconds we are given for each year that we are alive?
For some of us, we can live a life in which we are caught up in our pasts. Thinking of all the things we have said or done that we are regretful for. Thinking of the bad decisions we may have made. Thinking of how life could be different if we did this or that. I think this is why the Steps can be so helpful for those who have gone through addiction; take an inventory of your past and find ways in which to overcome it through your Sponsor and the process of amends. Because the reality of our pasts is that they are etched in stone and can never be changed no matter how many thoughts or seconds we put towards them.
Others get caught up in thoughts of possible futures. Wondering if this will transpire or if that might come about. Feelings of anxiety over possibilities that twist and writhe through our minds on what the future may hold. The Stoics feel that it is a waste of time to have anxiety over the future in our present for two reasons. First, why are you going to torture yourself over something that may never happen? Has that ever happened to you, worrying about a future that never came into fruition? Secondly, why torture yourself twice? Why torture yourself with anxiety over a future in your present, to then be tortured by the future a second time when it finally does become your present?
And I know that some people might be thinking that we need to think about our futures so that we can properly plan for it. But we also have to realize at the same time that this is a double-edged sword. In one way, we have to do the right things in life in our present so that we prepare for a better future for ourselves. While at the same time we have to realize that that future may not still come to us. You can find many examples of people who did everything they could possibly do to plan for a better future. They sacrificed their current moments with plans to finally live life years down the road and do all the things they always wanted to do. Only to discover they had few if any seconds remaining when they finally got to that point. All those years of sacrifice for the chance to finally live, to only discover that it was already too late. There is nothing wrong with planning for your future, but at the same time you must still accept that it may or may not come.
Ultimately, the first way in which Stoics feel that we waste our time and make our life short, is by being caught up in the wrong segments of time. We waste those seconds that we are given by ruminating over a past that is long lost to the sands of time, etched into our lives never to be changed. We can also waste those seconds we are given lost in thoughts of a future that may never come to pass. And all the while, we are wasting our present moment, the only moment that we truly have in our possession. Because it is the present that we only have control over, and the only aspect of time in which we can make something of it. Thus, we can sometimes feel that life seems so short because we spend so much of our time not in the current moment and making the most of it.
Another way in which we can make our lives feel shorter than what they actually are is through the way in which we value the preciousness of time. Everyone knows the common saying of “Time is money.” But few of us ever take a moment to think about how wrong this statement truly is.
Time is something that once it is lost it can never be regained. We all have a certain amount of time that will be proportioned for each one of us to live the entirety of our existence through. And each passing second of our lives turns that amount of time into less and less than we have.
Money, on the other hand, can be something that can be regained. I do not know if this fits with you, but I know that in my addictions, I was careless with my money and found myself to be quite in a hole when I reached my last bottom. Now, it did take some time to get back to where I was before I spiraled into those dark depths, but I have been able to. I even find myself better off than I was before.
So, what I have begun to realize in my recovery is that I can get the money back that was lost. But I cannot get back the time that was wasted in my addiction. I can’t turn back time and watch my daughter grow again. I can’t reset my thirties and relive them again.
Time is more precious than money…
…in fact, it is the most precious thing we have.
It is when you begin to realize that time is the most important possession in your life that you can truly begin to cross the boundaries into living a life that is not too short. Because when you realize the value of every passing moment, you begin to have a mind state in which you are trying to make the most of every single one.
What goals do you have in life right now? What hobbies do you want to explore? What are some of the relationships you want to rebuild or build up stronger? What things do you want to do? What are all your somedays I will…?
Now think about what you do with all the idle time in life that you have.
How much time do you spend mindlessly scrolling through the apps on your phone? In fact there are even apps that can track how much time you spend each day. Download one and observe your patterns over the coming days. How many seconds of life are you spending on the various apps that are on your phone? Ask yourself if this is worth the most precious resource in life that you have? It could be. It could be not. That choice is yours.
How much of your time do you spend watching TV? Do you just sit there for endless hours when you get home from work or on your weekends? Is this truly worth your most precious resource? It could be. It could be not.
I am not trying to condemn any actions that a person has in writing this. I will play video games in my free time. It is a hobby that I enjoy. And so, I have had to come to the conclusion that it is worth my precious time since I enjoy it. But I also don’t play them for endless hours into the night as I have curbed my behavior so that I have more time to do the things I want to do, such as writing this article for you.
It is just that we need to begin to think about our idle time not as being idle, but as being potential. It is a potential to begin to do those hobbies we want to explore. It is a potential to bring into fruition all those somedays I will, turning them from a future possibility into our here and now. The free time we have in our lives is our chance to set ourselves free into the great potential we want to achieve, and truly live the life we desire.
We also must think of this preciousness of time when it comes to the people who we choose to interact with. We have to realize that when someone asks for our time, they are literally asking for us to give to them something we can never get back. In fact, it means less for money to be asked from us by another person than the time they might be requesting.
What are you doing with the people in your life?
Do you make the time around them meaningful and worth the moments that you are spending together? Do you keep your cell phone tucked away so that you can focus on the here and now and the time that you have together? Are they even a person that is worth spending your time with?
What kind of conversations are you having?
Are they shallow and meaningless or deep and insightful? Is it a conversation that by the end of it you could attribute a true value to what was spoken, a value that was worth the precious gift of your time, or was it just mindless bullshit?
I am not sure about you, but I wasted too much time in my addictions. Time that I can never get back. So, what I need to do in my recovery is make sure that I am not keeping up those old habits and now start to make a life worth living. I need to realize that the time I have in life is finite and that each passing moment means that I have less of it remaining.
I need to stop living in a past already written and keeping my thoughts on a future that may never come. I need to embrace the moment of my present and make the most of it. I need to evaluate what I am doing with my free time, making sure that I am not wasting it away so that I can pursue the things I want in life. And I need to make sure that I am making the most of my interactions with others, as I try to rebuild relationships destroyed through addictions and build new ones in recovery, that are actually meaningful and worthy of my gift of time.
But the main thing I need to do is to get over this silly idea that there is not enough time in life and that it is too short. I am given over 30 million seconds every single year. I need to really begin to ask myself what I am doing with that time and how I am using it to make sure that I live.
I hope that you found what was written here to be insightful. And I want to thank you for giving your precious gift of time to read these words. I hope that you have found value in what was said. I wish you a life that accomplishes all your someday I wills. And I hope that when you come to the end of your days you can truly say to yourself…
I have lived!
THE SOBER STOIC: Derek Castleman is a writer, educator, scientist, data analyst, and philosopher. Struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism for over fifteen years while at the same time suffering from being bipolar, he was finally able to achieve recovery in 2018. From mental hospitals to rehab, county jail to sober living, 12 Step Programs would be his foundation, but he would eventually discover the path of Stoicism to be the key to his sobriety and sanity. Follow along with @thesoberstoic on Instagram and learn more about Derek HERE.
SOBERSCRIBE NOW!
Resources Are Available
If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulties surrounding alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, please reach out and ask for help. People everywhere can and want to help; you just have to know where to look. And continue to look until you find what works for you. Click here for a list of regional and national resources.
