10,000 and Change (originally published in Brothers Speak, July 2009)

I recently saw a commercial that had me literally stop in my tracks, take out my Blackberry and start frantically punching numbers into its' calculator. I don’t remember what the product was being advertised, but the gist of the commercial was that on an average, a man will live to see 25,000 days.

After checking the figures twice, and once more for confirmation, the answer staring back at me had me scratching my head. Out of 25,000 days I am now down to my last 10 thousand and change. I tried somehow to take inventory. Could that be possible? Did I really run through almost 15 thousand days? Already? Where have they gone and what have I done with them? What are my accomplishments thus far? This made me take note of what others had accomplished within their first 15 thousand days. Kurt Cobain, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison all died at 27 and established musical legacies in a scant 9,855 days of existence; the prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composing immortal classics within his first 2,190 days.

Not too comforting.

Modern day quantum physicists subscribe to the notion that time is an illusion. Plato argued that time is constant - it’s life that’s the illusion. Who’s to say? It’s almost eerie to think back on childhood memories with my mother. In most of my memories, I am now older than she was. Like the day she turned 25 and said to me “I’m 25 years old today. I’m officially over the hill.” Today I’m almost 15 years older than her in that memory and I remember it like it was yesterday; surreal.

I remember graduating from school and mentioning to a family friend I had no idea what I was going to do next and being irked by his answer, “You have plenty of time.” I never felt that way. Even when I was much younger that line of reasoning never held water with me. And this um - illusion - seems to be going by quicker every year.

When I was a kid, summers were endless. Sometimes to the point I was actually looking forward to school. Now if I don’t plan my summer weekend activities, it’s over. Just like that. Michael Douglas’ character Gordon Gecko from the movie Wall Street stressed to his young protégé that you should strive to be “rich enough not to waste time.” My friends in South Africa seem to live by that creed. I once had the gall to ask them, while visiting them in their beach house in Cape Town and noticing their housekeeper was ironing my underwear, why they insisted on having live-in housekeepers. Their simple answer: it gives them time to take care of the important things in life. They have life plans for 3, 5, 10, 20 years out; they constantly check and modify their SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis; they find time for their passions and hobbies; spending time with friends and family instead of concentrating on the mundane chores. They seem very conscious of this illusion called time and want to wring every drop out of it and make it count. That gave me something to think about at the time, as I sat on the terrace of their beach house sipping on a mimosa wearing crisp, creased boxer shorts.

10,000 and change…

Dan Kennedy, in his book No BS Time Management warns against certain people and activities as “Time Vampires”. The coworkers who come by your desk with really nothing to say, just to complain about the job in general or management in particular while you’re on deadline or even on the phone; the friends who call you up regurgitating past conversations because they have plenty of minutes on their cell phone plan but nothing to say; television…all time vampires.

There’s so much to cram within these last 10 thousand days. Reviewing my bucket list recently I came to the conclusion that it’s aggressive even for a man with 25,000 days left. Time to roll up the sleeves and start ticking off a few of them. A famous coach once said you will miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. That book you wanted to write? That great idea of a documentary you wanted to make? That song no one knows you can sing? Why not? And, better yet, why not NOW? The time is going to pass anyway; moving past your treadmill existence. “I’ll get to it eventually,”… “There is always tomorrow,” reasons the procrastinator.

But tomorrow, today is yesterday.

And so it goes. You can keep your regular job. You know, just mix it up a little. Have some starfish and coffee some mornings instead of egg whites on wheat toast; live it off the wall, as the immortal Michael Jackson advised.

Because if it turns out to be true that time is only an illusion, in this illusion we’re only blessed with so many days.