The Time Of Your Life

“There are some spare fuses in the crawlspace.” – Scary Movie 3

If I had a dime for every time I think about you, I’d definitely think about you.

Often, we spend much on things of little value, and little on things of great value.  I’m not the first to observe that, some dead Greek or Roman (probably both) beat me to it by thousands of years.

Regardless, it’s one of those truths that hits like a freight train when I remember it, but until then, it’s just humming along in the background of my life like the fridge in the kitchen or the bodies buried in the crawlspace.  There, but we just don’t think about them.

It’s easy to chase the shiny, the expensive, the Facebook™ fodder by pouring cash and hours into stuff that delivers about as much lasting joy as a two-week-old ham sandwich served by a lunch lady that looks too much like Ellen DeGeneres.

Meanwhile, the really good stuff, the stuff that actually fills my soul and makes me excited and glad to be alive, sits there free for the taking, and we walk right past it like it’s yesterday’s newspaper.

Take a sunset.

My first girlfriend reminded me of a sunset:  purple and hard on the eyes.

Not some fancy resort sunset that cost $5,000 and six hours in an airplane after the TSA cavity search to see.  Just the one out my front window, or even on the drive home.  Those shockingly bright filaments of cloud turning the sky into purples and oranges and pinks that no paint company has ever quite matched.  That experience costs exactly zero dollars and maybe minutes of my life to really look deeper at the world around me and see the wonders embedded there.

I can stand, tilt my head, and for that brief moment connect to something bigger than my to-do list or 401(k) balance.  Natural beauty is raw and free in the Recommended Daily Allowance, and served whether anyone notices or not.  I’ve had days where that pause reset my entire mood.

No app, no subscription, no ticket required.

Or this blog, for that matter.  Sure, you say, “Wilder, how can you be so funny?  It’s drugs, isn’t it?”

No, dear friends, that’s silly, unless you call sunsets, puppies wagging their tail, purring cats, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine drugs!  What nonsense!

What’s the difference between meth and math?  Meth is a stimulant, math is a depressant.

But I get a lot of enjoyment out of the writing, which is why I do it.

It’s the same with a good book, which I can get at the library for free because they don’t have a good anti-theft system.  Or a conversation with The Mrs. over coffee that isn’t about bills or schedules or why the carpet is wet again.

This is free. Abundant, even.

Ben Franklin nailed it 5,000 years ago when he designed the Great Pyramid:  “If thou lovest life then wasteth not time, for that is what lifeth is madeth of.  And, a little lower and to the left.”

Time is the one resource I can’t buy more of, can’t borrow, and that I can’t refinance.

Every second I spend is gone forever.

The opposite side of the coin is even uglier.

How many times did I give away the truly precious stuff:  hours, health, relationships . . . for pennies?

I asked seven CEOs “what’s the secret of your success?” and they each answered the same way, “How did you get in my house?”

So many people trade five full days a week doing work they actively hate for the fleeting dopamine hit of a weekend.  I get it.  It’s called a job, not a hobby, for a reason and that reason is that they give you money for it.  Bills gotta get paid, mouths gotta eat.  But when the dread starts Sunday afternoon and doesn’t let up until Friday at 5 p.m., I’m not living.  I’m enduring.

And enduring is what prisoners do.

The rest of us, unless you’re literally locked up because those pesky kids kept snooping around and just would leave it alone, have choices.

Real choices.  The guy staring back at me in the mirror every morning is usually the one who got me into whatever fix I’m in.

Bad career move?  My choice.

Skipped the workout?  My choice.

Put off that hard conversation?  Yep, still me.

But here’s the kicker:  we’re all surrounded by free gold.

I guess he caught the Germans with their panzers down.

A walk outside costs nothing and gives me fresh air, movement, and a chance to clear my head.   Gratitude practiced daily, literally just listing three things I’m thankful for, rewires my brain toward the good. There are millions of these things that surround us.  I can remember when I met The Mrs. (at that time, The Miss).  If you took the square root of our net worth at the time, it would have an imaginary component because it took digging even to get to zero.

I worried less then than I do now.  Quality of life is more about gratitude and hope than it is about net worth.  Understanding that I will die gives me power, and no excuse for not going all in.  I don’t get an extra prize for running out the clock.

Purpose and consequences are the secret ingredients to the Big Mac® of life.  Easy happiness is cheap: a little weed, endless video games, or passive scrolling.  It’s bliss without accomplishment, and it leaves everyone who follows that path hollow inside.

Real happiness, the kind that sticks, comes from choosing what’s worth being temporarily uncomfortable for.  It’s never as glamorous as the movies make it look.  No montage, no random hot stranger fixing your life, no making punji sticks to impale the crooked sheriff just because he hated Vietnam vets.  Nope.  Just brutal honesty, some discomfort, and the slow compound interest of time spent wisely, though you can still make the punji sticks.

Me?  I’m trying to audit the tradeoffs.  Where am I spending much on little?  Where am I skimping on the great?

The bright side is at Easter they get their bunnies for nothing.  And Peeps® for free.”

We’re all headed to the same exit ramp. The good news is, until then, most of us get to choose how we spend those miles unless a pack of comedic crime-fighting kids and a dog start snooping around my crawlspace.  The guy in the mirror is the one who decides.  Choose the sunset. Choose the conversation.  Choose the book on the deck.  Choose the work that doesn’t feel like slow death.  Stack the free wins.

They compound faster than any investment account, and the dividends are paid in meaning, not just money.