Don’t waste your time

A couple of years back, my wife’s aunt Debbie passed away from complications of COPD. Ironically, that’s also a major contributor to my dad’s death in 2007. It’s a nasty thing watching someone drown in their own lungs.

We recently received a box of her belongings to go through, which was almost entirely sudoku and crossword puzzles. It wasn’t much, and she didn’t have much. She lived in a nursing home for a couple of years before she died, and didn’t own much of anything. My wife told me she really missed Aunt Deb while we were going through it, and it really sucker punched me in the soul.

The thing is, she was only about 30 minutes away from our house, and we kept saying we had to make time to go visit her.

Guess what?

We never did. Time just kept marching along, and we always had too much going on. Then very unexpectedly , my mother in law called and said she only had a week left to live. She was always kind of sick as long as I knew her, but this was different.

Long story short, they were right. We did see her the day before she died, and we were there when she passed away.

So why couldn’t we have made that trip down there when she wasn’t terminally ill? Our priorities were all out of whack. We just assumed there would be tomorrow, but a whole bunch of tomorrow’s came and went. And now we will never get those days back.

This isn’t to tug heartstrings; it’s to remind you that the clock is ticking. You only get so many chances to throw a baseball with your son, or dance in the kitchen with your daughter. Nothing is guaranteed.

The same applies to your business aspirations. You think you have next week, month, or year to do something? You don’t, because you won’t. If it’s really a priority, you’d better treat it accordingly. Otherwise, stay in your lane and your cubicle farm.

If you need guidance on where to start, smash the link.