Life Is Short: You Might Miss It (If You Aren’t Mindful)

When was the last time you truly studied a daisy? 

Poet William Blake wrote of finding heaven in a wildflower. Such joy can, in fact, be found. 

But not when you speed past the fields at 60 mph. 

That’s why I encourage mindfulness so much. It isn’t because I am lazy. It isn’t because I don’t see the value in hard work when there is a need for it. Although I may disagree with what constitutes a “need,” I very much understand the concept of everyone doing their share. 

It’s because this life is such a glorious gift. And instead of slowing down and savoring it like a meal at a four-star restaurant, we slam it back with the casualness of a cheap shot of whiskey at the corner bar. Until, that is, we arrive in our sunset years, wondering where all our time went and wishing desperately that we could have it back. 

The Modern Rush to the Grave

When people claim to hate modern society, they often cite materialism. I’m more concerned with what materialism does to the soul. Pursuing material wealth may or may not pay off in the end—but it is guaranteed to take up a lot of time. Time you could spend doing countless other things. Nurturing the planet. Nurturing your children. Nurturing your own soul. 

It doesn’t matter if you believe in an afterlife or not. As far as any of us know, as of right now, you have this one particular life, in your one particular body. Life is a gift, and gifts are meant to be enjoyed, not casually glanced at in passing before being thrown in the back of the closet. 

The one thing you cannot get back is time. Of course, we all have material needs. But if you really think about it, the reason we hate thieves isn’t because they swipe material things (that we might not have even been using at the time). It’s because they take up our time and cause us considerable inconvenience. You lose time looking for what was lost, reporting it, and working for the money to replace it. 

It’s why we grumble at inequality, even as we realize that yes, Virginia, some people do work harder than others. We’re not angry that someone has five yachts as much as we are furious that some of us must spend every hour of our waking existence simply to stay afloat, while others seemingly do as they please all day. Our individual impressions may not always accurately reflect reality—some successful people do work extremely hard, while others got where they are via the Trust Fund Express—but as a collective, we recognize the inherent unfairness in some people working eighty hours a week for $18,000 while others work maybe eight for $80,000.

Slowing down isn’t feasible for everyone. I, of all people, get that. I’m convinced one reason my chronic illnesses have gotten as bad as they have is because I refused to slow down when slowing down was what my body needed. Had you asked me back then, I would have told you I had no choice but to keep going at the breakneck pace I was going at the time. I know now that wasn’t true. 

Why Such a Rush to “Save Time”?

I’m not sure who invented the washing machine, but I’m sure whoever designed it did so with one good purpose in mind: saving time. 

How many of us with washing machines still lament the lack of time we have, even though we no longer spend hours hand-scrubbing our garments by washboard? What on earth did we do with those extra hours while the machine handled the labor? We certainly weren’t out in the fields with Blake, studying flowers and writing poetry. 

That reality encapsulates both my hopes for AI—and my fears. I’m not afraid of “the machines taking over.” Fact is, various people have “taken over” since time immemorial and created our modern world of war, climate tipping points, homelessness, hunger, and credit scores. 

AI has enormous potential to ensure everyone’s basic needs are met without shortchanging anyone else. It’s a vast repository of human knowledge, of what’s been proven to work and what hasn’t, mixed with a killer POS and inventory system that knows exactly how much of what is on hand where. If used wisely, it can give humans so much time back. If used incorrectly, though, it becomes just another tool of “progress.”

Have humans progressed, though? As I write these words, it’s my 54th birthday. I can’t honestly say that my life today is much better, materially speaking, than it was when I was a child. The one thing I would have wanted the most, the one thing that would have made me happy, has already been irrevocably lost to time. 

It really makes you reflect on how you spend each of your precious moments. Otherwise, as you age, as I have been lucky enough to do, the things you miss most are those things you never made the time to do.

Machines can improve efficiency. They can never, however, replace what humans need most: emotional time with the ones you love.

The Memory, the Time I Miss the Most, Never Happened 

When I was a child, I wanted one thing more than any other: to go on a hunting trip with my dad. It was a rite of passage I looked forward to like most children anticipate their first date or first car. I loved the outdoors from my earliest years, and, for better or worse, my dad was the parent with whom I was able to connect, or thought I could. 

Back then, I had no conception of the complications a girl-child on the verge of puberty could bring to a male-only hunting camp. It was as unknown to me as my health diagnoses, although being autistic probably does explain in part why such a male-centric coming of age was such a big deal to me despite my equally compelling special interests in more stereotypically “girly” stuff like Barbie. 

I tried to show my enthusiasm. I loved to shoot, bow and arrow, guns of all caliber, it didn’t matter. It was the one way my dad and I could bond, and I got good at it early. I tried to show I was ready. One early fishing trip that ended in tears when I found out the fish were dead convinced me I was too soft, but since then, I had gazed at gutted deer aplenty without the sight so much as turning my head, let alone my stomach. I was convinced I was ready, and in my heart, there was nothing I looked forward to more eagerly. 

Only, that trip never happened. 

Could we have scheduled something separate, something without the other guys around, something just Dad and me? Perhaps. 

But we never took the time. 

And because of that, so many other milestones passed without me caring much about them at all. Getting my driver’s license was just so I could commute to work and not burden other people with needing a lift to the store. Graduating? Yay, now I could have a different boss yell at me the minute I stepped out of line. Getting married? It was simply shifting my housekeeping duties from one property to another. These things didn’t mean anything; they were just what I was “supposed” to be doing with my time, and I handled these duties with robot-like efficiency but zero heart.

I have enormous guilt today because losing my soul like that cost other people their time, even though I tried my best to do what I thought I was “supposed” to be doing. I lost my sense of love, of wonder, and adopted weary resignation instead at age 12, my own personal 1984, when I realized that “someday” really meant “never” for the one thing I wanted the most. I felt like I wasn’t worth the time of day, not even for my own father, and because of that, I made others feel as if they were worth less than their full, marvelous, wonderful selves, too. 

The one thing of which I am most proud is that I never passed that burden, that feeling of being “not worth the time” onto my own kids. I simply never had any. And while that decision was ultimately right, especially considering my health issues, it raises the question: what time do your kids need today that you are not giving them? And what are you doing that’s so much more important than giving it to them? 

Life Is Short: How Will You Mindfully Use Your Time?

Your children, if you have them, aren’t getting any younger. Neither are you. 

What are you doing, right now, today, to show your kids that they are worth your time? What are you doing to show yourself some love, for that matter?

When was the last time you stopped to marvel at heaven in a wildflower? 

It’s easy to get distracted. Modern life moves fast. That’s exactly why I encourage slowing down regularly. Your time talking to the mat isn’t only to work your physical body and relax your nerves. It’s your time to get back into sync with your own soul, to remind yourself of what matters to you, to remember that what you have right now is this life, this body, this experience. How can you experience it beautifully, while helping those around you see the wonder in life, too? 

To me, there is no greater human calling than to help each other make the most of whatever life we have. To do that, though, it helps to first reconnect with ourselves and what we want most for our time. When we do that, it’s easier to get in sync with others. You also gain a deeper appreciation of them. 

Life is short. That’s exactly why you shouldn’t rush it. Explore it mindfully before it passes you by.