Awhile pack, a college friend posted about a “Life Calendar” he came across from Wait But Why. I was intrigued, and did the exercise myself.
It maps out your life from birth through age 90 by simple rows of dots – 52 in each row, representing one week of your life per dot. You can follow some promptings and record various life events and life stages – like elementary school, college, first job, marriage. etc. I maxed out my creative side and color coded mine by life stages.
I then used an online age calculator and a Google sheet to convert my age in years plus weeks at various life events and marked them with an X. These included dates when kids were born, times I lost close friends, and when I was diagnosed with partial epilepsy.
After that I put in some other marks – how old my father-in-law was when he passed, the age of my dad, the current age of my kids, the average life expectancy of a US male, how old I’ll be when my kids graduate high school. This last set of data points was especially powerful.
It was a sobering and yet enlightening experience.
Often times with clients, I talk about the tension of living in Today vs planning for Tomorrow – and visually seeing how many of my weeks are considered Yesterday was startling.
All those Yesterdays were at one point Tomorrows.
Here’s what I took away:
1. When thinking of life events I wanted to record, it was obvious family relationships were key. But how much of each hour of each day of each week am I devoting to enhancing them vs other things not on that calendar? How much of my personal finance decisions were allocated towards fulfilling and helping enhance those relationships – and *shudder* how much of my time is lost in pursuing a more financially prosperous Tomorrow while neglecting Today?
2. The days are long but the years are short. When I first heard this saying I thought it was cute. I remember clearly my former boss telling me this right before we had our first kid. I’m now more fully realizing its meaning and want to make each day of each week count because they’re flying by, even if in the moment it seems they can’t end soon enough.
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
– Psalm 90:12