By The Campfire

July 18, 2008

I have seen a lot since I came screaming into the world back when Ike was liked. Technically, it comes to 451,800 hours (could be more, depending on exactly when you read this). So what do I have to show for it?

Well, uhh, I have read a lot of books, thousands of them, actually. I have watched thousands of movies and more TV and Internet than I care to admit. Not too impressive. Okay, I have typed millions of words and drawn thousands of images and sang hundreds of songs. I have spent probably 2,000 hours in barbeque joints alone. That has to count for something besides clogging my arteries. Or maybe not.

How many hours have I spent on a beach or in the car or sitting in chairs or at a restaurant table? I hate to think about how many hours I have spent at work, or God forbid, in meetings that ended with no decisions.

How many hours have I spent in the shower or on the toilet? How many hours have I spent with my children? Or away from them? How many Coca-Colas and chickens have I swallowed? How many questions have I asked or answered?

My wife and I have been married for 11,315 days, proving that when we said, “I do,” we did. That is a lot of laughs and smiles and tears and kisses.

How do we account for the time we are alive? Can we measure it with a figure like the minimum wage or what a plumber costs per hour? Is it possible to calculate if we have made a positive impact on the world or the people with whom we have experienced that time? What about the hours spent sleeping (approximately 112,950 hours for me so far)? Where does that fit?

Recently I saw Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List. They play two old men diagnosed with terminal cancer. Freeman concocts a Bucket List – things he’d like to do before he kicks the bucket. Nicholson, a callous billionaire, until he meets Freeman (okay, until he gets cancer), bankrolls the worldwide items on their lists and they are off enjoying their lives for the first time. It is not a new premise.

I have had friends who died without a list and I know some who checked off a few meager items before they checked out. Most people never live the life they hoped for when they were young and all of those hours were spread before them like a buffet of opportunity.

Age is relative. You are as young as you feel. We have heard all of the clichés. Baby Boomers are trying to redefine what it means. With them, marketers are trying to brand the ageless experience. Many try to ignore age as a concept.

What have you done with your time — work, play, drive, study, suffer, laugh, eat, drink, work out, read, surf the web, talk on the phone, email, what? When you wake up, do you see the hours ahead as an opportunity or a chore to get done? Do you have a daily bucket list? Mark off each to-do and move to the next?

We love stats. Sports are filled with stats, companies are ruled by them, the news is translated into them. No matter if you are rich, poor, sick or healthy, the question is always the same: Are you wasting the time you have on this earth?

You are reading a blog right now. Is that the best use of your time? I have no answers for you. I just ask the questions.

If you are dead by the time the sun goes down tomorrow, will someone remove your watch and look at the hands as they tick off the time without you and wonder where your time went?

Could we end pollution and poverty and starvation and disease and hate and war and suffering and strife if each of us used our time on such things? Or is time just one of those things we need to eliminate?

I just spent 24 minutes writing this. I’ll never get those minutes back.

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