A tenth of your life

is worth spending happy & healthy

I’ve said it many times before but I’m an early-morning-in-the-dark coffee drinker. I like to sit out on my patio, such as it is, and enjoy the darkness, and the quiet. I’d like to claim that I five-thirty my coffee each day, but in actuality I typically six it. Still, this time of year the darkness persists¹ and when the clouds clear, not only does the proverbial mercury plummet, but the stars oversee the operation with gusto. I love it.

On the second cup I pull out my tablet and scribble some pages. I ***hate*** journaling but this practice feels different because I delete the pages at the end of each month. Nobody will ever have to read about the tedium of my days, or the anxieties I share with myself or the elation I feel some mornings for no reason at all.

Pondering the upcoming new year, now just visible in the rearview mirror, I was considering what I might write for my 2024 intentions. I thought to myself, well…I need to keep doing this coffee and writing thing. And I also miss meditating. And I also need to stretch because I have the best, softest bed ever but combined with a lot of sofawork, my body becomes overly stiff. Also walking, I need more of that. But I cannot fit all this into every day! It would take too long!

Tabletop fire pit and coffee on the final morning of 2023. Don’t tell the HOA insurance company.

Then I added it up. Let’s see, 20 minutes of stretching, 30 minutes of coffee, 10 minutes of writing…anyway I came up with a total of 90 minutes. TOO. MUCH. TIME. But something nagged. Turning back to the calculator, I decided to compare that number to my waking hours. It’s a tenth.

Is my life worth spending a tenth of my awake-time on what feels good mentally, physically, emotionally? And not just good, but necessary. Healthy. I need the calm that comes with meditation. I value the cleanse of the “journal.” I require the quiet of morning patiocoffee. When I put it that way, a tenth seems too small. Shouldn’t we spend more, say half, or even three quarters of our lives being happy and healthy? Work is a priority, I know. But the next time I find myself saying ”Oh I don’t have time for that thing,” the thing being anything I enjoy, I’m pulling out the calculator.²

But the real worth of this shift lies in the thinking, not the mathing. I have one single life and have sailed past its halfway point. I’ve spent most of my adult life so far speeding hither and yon, not often pausing to consider anything, really, mostly enjoying the rush while marking time’s passage on the calendar. Then I’d wonder how so many years could slip by so swiftly. But now, without berating myself or instigating regrets, I’ve simply decided to value my own life more. Committing a tenth of my awake-time in this world to my own peace, waking to the stars, greeting the day, it’s one way to be a better human.

1. except for the porch lights in my courtyard, which also persist.

2. because yes, I used one to figure out 16x60 (waking hours transformed into minutes) which turns out to be 960. But even I can tell 90 is about 1/10 of that without a calculator.