Don’t let pressure and overwork encourage you to hurry past parts
of your life. Whether it’s your children’s early life, whole segments of your
marriage, or maybe the last active years of loved parents, they are swiftly
past and gone beyond recall. Regret comes too late to save them.
How many
people still cherish an unfulfilled ambition to travel, or start their own
business, or enter a new career, and yet do nothing to make it happen? Too
many. Time passes. What was once an inspiring idea seems less and less feasible.
Yet still they cling to the dream — only not this year. Maybe next year, when
things calm down a little. When they’re not so busy. When they have the time.
We are so confused about time. We always have the same amount of
it, since we can neither create more, nor save any for later, nor do away with
what there is. Yet our perception of time is totally different. Sometimes it
seems to drag in endless amounts. Sometimes it appears to flash past. Only our
perception changes. Time itself does not.
Of course, what we mean is time free from other demands. But we will never have
that either. There are always other calls on our attention and always will be.
If you’re waiting for that magical day when nothing else awaits you, only your
dream ready for fulfilment, you will wait for ever.
The truth is simple. People confuse what is urgent with what is
important; what is pressing today with what is pressing in terms of their whole
life. A task stands before you and shouts for your attention because it’s here,
now, and must be done by tomorrow. So you set aside far more important
activities and choices because they’re not urgent. You can do them tomorrow, no
matter. Only that tomorrow never comes.
To live this way is understandable — it is how
the vast majority live — but it’s neither sensible nor fulfilling. All those
unmet dreams and expectations build up, until you enter the later part of life
trailing a vast, sad cloud of “might have beens.” So many people today are
filled with regret at the opportunities they missed because there were more
urgent claims at the time. As they look back, they see clearly those claims
were never as important as the hopes they supplanted. Now it’s too late.
To choose a fulfilling path, you must be clear about your
values, so you can see the difference between demands that are only urgent, but
otherwise have little importance in the scheme of your life; and those that may
lack obvious urgency, yet are crucial to who you are and what you want your
life to be. You must have the courage to use your time on important matters and
set aside what’s merely urgent.
If there’s a dream in your life — something you yearn
to achieve, or merely something it would be so much fun to try — don’t put it
aside. If that dream is up there at the top (or very near the top) of your
personal values, do it now. Yes, now. Don’t wait another day. Nothing is as
important to your long-term wellbeing. But if your dream doesn’t
make it to the top of your list, set it aside without regret. Like a pretty
toy, it may be pleasant to look at, but it’s not important enough to give time
to.
Choice may not remove regret entirely — you may always
wonder a little what it might have been like — but at least you’ll know you did
choose. You didn’t look back later and realize you’d missed that boat without
ever grasping it was ready to leave.
