Life goes so fast! I'm so busy! Work is crazy! I can't take time off as that would make me a waste of space! No rest for the wicked! You snooze you lose! High five..dolphin dive..too slow!
Do you have FOMO? Is your life nonstop, and going way too fast?
Today's modern life is nonstop. Literally. There is no longer a time, place or space that you can head to where things stop! ...
...Shops are expected to be open all day and night
...people are expected to be available 24/7
...entertainment spots are meant to be open late
...the wifi/data never turns off
...our phones are never flat
...TV runs anytime/anywhere
...work days go beyond 5pm... The list could never stop (just like everything else in our lives).
What does this mean for us? Sleep is traded for activity, health is traded for wealth, laughs are traded for incomes, conversations are traded for chats or snaps, hope is traded for reality of earning your deserved future, love is traded for moments of pleasure, living in a community is traded for solo closed door life where need to share is absent, friendships are just mutually beneficial contracts which are ended the second the other party stops giving.... Tell me these things are not true in the life of any one around you or with yourself.
I am guilty of these things! It's not as hard as I wish it was for me to think of and relate to these!
Yes, life is short and yolo bro. But while you yolo it, are you actually doing what inspires you? Are you trying to escape your life or live in it so fully that you don't want to escape, but instead want to invite others in to it to join you fully alive?
What did you do this week? Or today even? Did you just tick off a to-do list or did you fill it up with stuff/people/places you love and that leave you grinning and actually loving life while yolo-ing? Never spend most of your life working towards a better one! In brutal honesty you actually do only live once (yolo is real, woah! :o ) and have no idea how long that will be!
Even if you have faith an so hope for eternal life- with death having lost its power when Jesus rose on Easter Sunday-God still wants you to live not just survive right now!
God didn't create you and give each breath so He could watch you go to work, vacuum, cook toast, go shopping, get fit, eat your greens, tell your kids off, etc... No one, let alone God, is excited about those things!... no.
God gives us each breath because along with that breath he has given us dreams, abilities, joys, community, outdoors and he can't wait to see what you do with them! To see you running around living it up for your sake and those around you!
To do big things or little things, to laugh, to leap, to explore, to dream more, to create, to conquer and to just live man. Life isn't some lame achievement contest-though some lame schools, parents, coaches and even our very own thoughts may tell us that... That fun doesn't win prizes, that creating doesn't bring in a good income, that spending time with others isn't worth your effort/inconvenience. You know what, some of these ARE FACTS but having fun wins you a grin. A humming heart. An alive friendship, team, family and/or community. A sense of uniqueness and unconditional value. There is so so much value in fun, and so many ways to have fun without sabotaging your self or others.
Sometimes I can spend so long just living my days minute by minute, running from urgent task and yet feeling like I am on a hamster wheel and really not enjoying it all to much... don't get me wrong I love a run, a hectic day, ticking off to-do list etc but not when it gets stuck on repeat; like a never ending road and when I suddenly realise that I'm no longer calling the shots or having fun or actually running in the direction/to a destination I would want to end up at!... That's when I realise the fog of busy-ness has set in and the fun is fading.
Have you ever reached that point?
When you keep chasing the urgent things (according to media, work, friends); what is important to you can get lost.
Often what is important to us is not necessarily urgent (eg. encouraging X person, going on a trip with X awesome location, saying thanks to someone, trying a new sport/hobby, painting on the new art gear from Christmas, learning to play a jam on the guitar or drums, learning a language, writing a song, fighting world poverty with a donation or action, teaching your cousin to ski,caring for your elders etc)...They are important to you, but they're not urgent.
I don't know about you but stuff that is most important to me is what I really want to be involved with- NOT the urgent stuff or flatline day-to-day essential tasks! We need to be so careful as the world around us seems to encourage us to focus on urgent (with more instant results) not important, we are told: "you need this!" "Your life is wasted without this!" "Bank now and live happy" "Don't wastes a second cooking delicious nourishing food, eat our crappy fast option!"...
Please spend a second or two (yeaaaa I knowww it's not urgent (hehe) but its important I think...) to think or write out what it is that is truly important to you AND THEN compare that to what you are spending all of you time doing. Are urgent things driving TOWARDS the important stuff in your life or are they driving them OUT? Are lame supposed essentials leading you away from enjoyment? Do you need to wait for the weekend to "escape" your day-to-day and have a moment living to forget/negate how lame you've let your week be?
HARSH TRUTH HERE (and I'm not even sorry because I need to tell myself this right now!) : On your death bed- whether you are stoked to be confident in heaven on the other side or not; you are not going to wish you'd ticked off one more urgent thing, but rather that you'd spent waaaay more time enjoying or investing in the important vibrant stuff in life making memories.
I hate seeing people reach that point of dying and, only then, realising they'd messed up their priorities. Please please PLEASE take some time ASAP (Note: I am trying to make this as urgent as I can, haha!) setting out to add more important stuff into your day so that hamster wheel of urgency isn't your reality until you land at the end running out of steam and only click then that there were so many things you wished you did,but didn't "have time to do" because that, my friends, has to be a pretty crappy moment/realisations, haha... :/ :D Fun fact: All of us get 24hrs each day, no one has less time available than another.
I think you can believe that hey its actually pretty urgent that we enjoy each day, because that's what life is given to us for. That's what life is! God doesn't care what you achieved, He cares about the number of hours you spend grinning and laughing, He cares that you are you, that you live with passion and He gave us faith that through Jesus Christ we have an offer or eternal life here and after death (eternal= unlimited, never ending...)
You know what you stepped out to work towards is meaning you are not enjoying any moment right now.
Don't get to busy living that you forget about filling it with LIFE! Love, Interest. Friendships and Experiences.
Quote from Steve Jobs' deathbed: