What the hell is time anyway besides something we wish we had more of? There has been a recurring theme that continues to pop up in my personal life lately involving time. It seems that almost daily I’m reminded of how fleeting our time here on earth really is and how important what we do with that time is. Now, granted, the “important” I used there is subjective, but you get the picture. Time is the most valuable asset you have. Yet, rarely, do people treat it that way.

People spend it on things that don’t bring value to their lives. They spend it on relationships that don’t bring them happiness or joy. They spend it on careers that feel like daily soul-sucking endeavors. They spend it chasing people who aren’t choosing them in return. Sometimes they spend it on quick fixes and look for instant gratification and the immediate high of acquiring something new, whether it be a relationship or good of some kind. Sometimes we all just have a hole we want to fill. The end result always remains the same. Once that time is spent, it cannot be replenished. It is gone forever.

These points have been constantly reiterated to me over the last couple of months due to a couple of things. First, and mainly, the growth of my daughter, who is now 13. As you can imagine I have a billion pictures of her and they are on my phone, computer, in my file cabinet, and in frames around my house. It’s not hard to come across a picture of her as a baby or a few years younger than she is now. Naturally, my mind draws a comparison of her at the younger age to the girl she is now and the woman she is on her way to becoming. I look at the growth she has gone through and then I think of all of the growth I have undergone myself. On the surface, thirteen years sounds like a long time, but it feels like it happened in the blink of an eye. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, so I can see things I should have done better as her dad and I can see things I should have done better for my own wellbeing.

I just took her for her first international trip, to the Dominican Republic, this past Spring Break. There were many times during that trip where I wondered to myself, “when did she grow up?”. Maybe it was a behavior or the way she dressed. Something just made her seem not so little anymore. I think any parent with teenagers can relate to what I’m saying. The process seems to take place over night. From being your child to, “This kid isn’t really much of a “kid” anymore. What the hell happened?”.

The second reminder is people near my age passing away. Cause of death doesn’t matter that much. Having someone near my age pass away reminds me of how quickly everything can end. How quickly the lights can go out and how quickly it can all be taken away. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but it always crosses my mind first. All of this ties into one of my biggest fears. Okay, probably my BIGGEST fear.

When it’s my time, regardless of how I go, whether it is a disease and I know death is coming around a certain time, or it’s an accident and it happens quickly, and you have that moment people talk about where your life flashes before your eyes. I will be thinking, “Did I do enough? Did I do all the things I wanted to do? Did I give my best going after what I wanted?” My biggest fear is that I will be filled with regret. Regret about not actually going after what my heart truly wanted. I’m afraid I’ll regret that I didn’t try enough of the things I wanted to. I’m afraid I’ll look back and be disappointed that I didn’t experience much of what life had to offer, and because I didn’t, I’m afraid that my daughter won’t be inspired to want “more” out of her life.

One of the difficulties of being a single parent is, with any kind of custody arrangement, you really can only control what happens during those times when your child is with you. When they aren’t, you don’t generally have any say. If your co-parent isn’t on the same wavelength in terms of wanting more out of your life and in turn, more for your child’s life as they get older, it can be a challenge. Now, this isn’t about bashing co-parents or anything, but not everyone is on the same wavelength. For example, some people are happy and content being employees for large corporations while others want to start their own businesses. Some people are happy and content to travel around the US or maybe their region of the US where they live where others want to get out and see the world. There is no right or wrong answer. Everyone is different and different people want different things and aspire to different things as well.

I don’t want to reach the end of my time wishing I had made that trip that one time I had the chance. I don’t want to regret not trying that side hustle, not writing that book, not trying to reach out to that group to offer help and support, not taking my daughter as many places as I possibly can to experience as much as we can together, not trying something I really want in my heart because I’m scared. I don’t want those regrets, because in the end, when the end of my time is near, I can’t change it. How do you face those regrets when you know there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about them? You take the action NOW, so they don’t become regrets.

The older I get, the more I realize, the key to just about everything is taking action and taking action now. By taking action right away, it’s almost like you are creating more time for yourself on the back end. When you procrastinate on something, are you really doing anything in the between time before completing the task? In my case, no, I’m usually overthinking the perfect plan or trying to FIND motivation, which seems like a fool’s errand because I don’t think you FIND motivation, I think you create it by taking action and it comes from momentum. At least that is how it works for me. I feel actual motivation to start something new once in a blue moon, but if I take the first step, my motivation to finish builds as I go. Being consistent in taking action to accomplish that goal then turns into a habit until the goal is accomplished and it becomes a part of who I am and it becomes just something that I do because it is who I am.

Imagine being on your death bed. You know your time is almost up. Family visiting hours are over. It’s late. You’re alone on that bed. Just you and your thoughts. You reminisce about the good times you had. The amazing experiences and memories. Slowly, here and there, what if’s start to pop up.

What if you had talked to that beautiful girl/handsome man you saw that one time? What if you told that person how you really felt that one time they hurt you? What if you took that trip you always wanted to take but kept putting off because of money? What if you had just gotten in shape and started eating right and working out, just a few times a week? What if you wrote that memoir or that self-help book detailing how you dealt with that tough experience? What if you just started that side hustle? Invested that little bit of money in an index fund in your 20’s? Spent more time showing your kid what the world has to offer, whether it be through traveling, new food, local cultures, etc.? Or, just spent more time with your children instead of scrolling through your phone? Or working? Or whatever else you were doing instead of spending quality time….

As you lay there, you realize at the time you had perfectly good reasons (aka excuses) not to do those things, but as your time is expiring you now see that whatever was holding you back doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Whatever was missing could have been acquired along the way. Any sense of rejection you might have felt that scared you would have felt a hell of a lot better than the regret you are now feeling from not taking the action. At least with the rejection you would have made the effort and known where you stood, rather than not know and have to ask the worst possible question ever: “what if?”.