I’ve never been a big fan of the phrase, “Live Every Day Like Your Last”. If I was going to do that, I would book the most ridiculous multi-leg flight possible, and go try to see my loved ones one last time. On the plane I would work on my will and write people tons of letters.
That would make a fine last day, but doing that every day would leave me broke and leave my friends and family very confused. On the plus side, I bet my penmanship would improve considerably.
I get the sentiment, though: life is short, and if you put things off for too long, you may never get around to doing them. Maybe there’s a better cliche to follow, though: “Live Every Day Like Your First”.
Imagine that you just now gained consciousness of this person you call you. You get to keep all of this person’s previous memories, knowledge, and experience. You poke around this person’s head and quickly assimilate all of his or her desires, goals, fears, and ambitions. Because you’re a smart and rational consciousness, you know that you’ve got some time to work towards those things. What do you do?
You could think of your life as a big garden. Some of the plants are in full bloom, ready to be picked. Others are close. Maybe some are passed their prime and have begun to wither. Others are seedlings, or seeds themselves. Parts of the garden are unplanted.
If you live like it’s your last day, you’ll cut down all of the plants that have reached maturity. You’ll also cut down the ones that are close, because you won’t be there to enjoy them tomorrow. Even the seedlings may as well be pulled up for whatever they’re worth. The parts of the garden that are yet unplanted will remain that way.
Of course, it’s unlikely that anyone reading this is going to die tomorrow. Most, if not all of us, will wake up, take a look at the garden, and realize that we have an empty garden.
If you live like it’s your first day, you’ll take a completely different approach. The most important part of the garden is the empty part. You choose seeds to plant, you dig holes for them, water them, and give them time to grow, knowing it’s not your last day. Seedlings get similar care. Plants that have fully grown will be picked, both to make room for new ones and to receive the full benefit of all of those seeds you planted and nurtured as they grew.
The gardener of the “last day” garden will get more of a yield on the first day, but the gardener of the “first day” garden is better off on every other day.
One type of seed is a habit. You begin a new habit, knowing that it won’t yield fruit for days, weeks, months, or even years. Even so, you give it the attention it requires, knowing that some day it will grow into something amazing, something that can’t be conjured up in a day.
Another type of seed is a relationship. Some of the strangers in the world today will become acquaintances. Some acquaintances will become friends. Some may become lovers or even the person you spend the rest of your life with. Those relationships aren’t built overnight, they’re deliberately planted and nurtured over months and years and decades.
Learning is also a type of seed. It’s amazing when you think about those topics that you know best, and realize that at one point you knew zero facts about them, then one, then two, and then more. Over the years a passing interest can turn into an expertise, or at least a skill or body of knowledge that improves your experience on earth.
The one benefit of living every day like your last is that your crops never go rotten and spoil from underuse. This is possible with living every day like your first as well, though. When you’ve learned enough, go do something with it. Don’t make friends for the sake of making friends, use those friendships to make each others’ lives better. Habits are fun and powerful to build, but there’s no point in becoming really productive if that productivity doesn’t go towards something valuable, for example.
Sometimes it seems like the world is focused on the harvest, and not on the sowing. That sort of attitude leads to some pretty bleak gardens. If, instead, you focus only on the sowing and caretaking of the garden, the harvest comes naturally and is often more plentiful than you’d expect.
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Photo is cool graffiti from Romania
I’m going to try to shift back to a Monday/Thursday schedule for posts, which is why this is posted so soon after the last one.
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