Both things can be true

You’ve heard it a thousand times. Life is short. It’s usually meant to instill a sense of urgency to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. But when we hear something as often as we’ve heard that, the words lose meaning. Then I heard something I had never heard before. Life is long.

It turns out, it’s exactly what I needed to hear, right now, at this time in my life.

Life is short doesn’t last

I don’t remember the first time I heard the phrase, “Life is short.” It’s such a part of our common lexicon, nobody remembers where it came from. Most of us don’t give it much thought, except at funerals. We sit there with our hands in our lap, as we face our own mortality, trying to imagine what people will be saying when it’s us in the box. We swear to ourselves we’re going to start doing things differently. We’re going to prioritize our family. We’re going to tell people we love them more often. We’re going to write that book. We’re going to live every day like it was our last.

Spoiler alert: we don’t do any of that, at least not for long. That feeling doesn’t last. A week later, we’re back to waking up at 3:00 worrying about the same useless shit we were before - that email we forgot to send, that snarky comment on LinkedIn, the conversation we’re not ready for. The book we were going to write goes back into the ‘someday pile’. The I love you’s go unsaid. All the important things get lost, again. Our loves are out of order.

You still have time

I was at a retreat last week and I heard something I’ve never heard before. “Life is long”. Hm. It felt jarring at first. WTF does that mean? Something about it spoke to me, so I reflected on it. And damn, I think it’s exactly what I needed to hear.

I quit drinking 3 1/2 years ago. I never drank every day but I gave ‘er on weekends. For some reason, it’s important to me you know that. When I quit, I felt a great sense of urgency to make up for lost time. There was so much I needed to do with all the extra days of the week, and hours in the day. I was running out of time to do all of it. I heard the clock ticking every day.

This sense of urgency served me well. I launched my podcast. I changed my business. Jill and I booked some great adventures with the kids. None of that happens if I’m still drinking.

But it was overwhelming, trying to make up for lost time. It’s hard to rest and be present when there is so much to do. Most importantly, I often feel the weight of every decision. With so little time to waste, I feel like I have to choose carefully to avoid spending my time on things that don’t matter. Life is long is the antidote for that.

Slowing down to speed up

Like it or not, at 55 I’m on the back nine on the golf course of life. I have maybe 25 good years left to make the impact on the world I want to make. That’s terrifying to me, especially when I consider how fast the last 25 years have gone. Some days, it’s all I think about. I’m not present with the people that matter most, not really. I often wonder if quitting drinking has made me more selfish, not less.

But what if life is long? Look at everything I’ve done in the last 25 years. I’ve had kids, started by business, got sober and navigated almost losing our son last year. I’m barely recognizable as the person I was 25 years ago. I still have time to make just as big a leap in the next 25 years. I can make mistakes. I can recover. Not every decision is life or death.

Because life is long, I still have time to do everything I want. Nothing is too ambitious. I can travel to far away places. I can build a house in the woods. I can write a book. It’s not too late for any of this. I can get done twice as much on the back nine of my life as I did on the front nine.

Yes, life is short. That means I need to move.

And life is long. There is nothing I’ve always wanted to do that I still don’t have time to do.