This Is Your Life.
Choosing Moments on Purpose.
This is your life.
This is the mantra that keeps me grounded in the present. It arrives unprompted from my mind—This is your life—and causes me to take note of what I’m doing, because the thing I’m doing at that very moment is my life, made up of the thousand tiny decisions I make each day.
This is your life—at the gym, warming up to lift, workout, or run. In these moments, I feel proud that I make time for my health and fitness when there are so many other responsibilities pulling at me. At times, the mantra makes me feel anxious—that I don’t have more time to workout if the day doesn’t allow it. And still, there’s space to make more room for it ahead, if I choose to create it.
This is your life—right now, at this moment, while I type this in draft form. My inner critic is loud: no one wants to read this. And this, too, is my life—overcoming that voice and deciding to write it anyway. Who cares if no one wants to hear this? Literally, no one cares, except that inner critic, who is quite the little asshole if I do say so myself. The act of writing it is the point, I have to remind myself.
It comes to me while scrolling social media, when in the moment I know deep down there are better things to be doing with my time. Those are the moments I am both aware and stuck—aware that I should stop scrolling and choose to do something else, while also living with the feeling of just wanting to space out for a little while. When I’m not careful, a little while turns into a long while.
How much of my life will I spend consuming the hot takes of other people’s opinions?
It comes to me while I’m organizing the closet, doing dishes for the thousandth time, packing up the car to go snowboarding. Activities with the kids are the moments I love most when the mantra comes to me—when I feel deep down that the time we steal together truly is my life.
I say that now, writing in a blissfully quiet (and clean) house while they’re all at school for the day. The clock ticks toward 4 p.m., when they’ll rush in with their noise and emotions and ssstttuuuffffff, and I’ll have to remind myself (sometimes through gritted teeth) that a cluttered mudroom really isn’t that big of a deal.
This is your life.
This is your life.
This is your life.
The prompt draws me to the question: Am I being, right now, who I want to be in the future?
If I want to be a writer, then I must write now.
If I want 15 minutes to walk between meetings on long workdays, then I must put it in my calendar—and also get up from my desk to do it.
If I want to make time to eat, workout, and connect, then I must do those things now.
There is no future place I can reach where I’ll finally feel like I’ve earned the space for the things that really matter. I already have the ability to create it—and so do you. No one is coming to give us more time.
It’s already here.
This is your life.