Life Is Long

Leander, Texas

12:20 am

Dear Leah, Jack & Adam-

Life Is Long.

I know. That sounds wrong.

We are constantly reminded that life is short. It may be one of the most repeated pieces of wisdom ever offered. And mathematically, it’s hard to argue with.

Strangely, I always thought I would die young. I’m not sure why, but for much of my younger life I never imagined making it much past 35.

Some shrink might have a field day with that.

Maybe part of it was that I lived fully in those early years — covered a lot of ground, packed in a lot of experiences, and rarely gave much thought to how much time might be left.

Then a funny thing happened. I didn’t die.

Thirty-five came and went. Then 40. Then 50, 60 and 70.

And now, at 72, I find myself thinking about time differently than I did when I was young.

Oliver Burkeman’s book “Four Thousand Weeks” puts the math of human life into an uncomfortable perspective. If we’re fortunate enough to live to around 80, we get roughly 4,000 weeks.

That’s it. Put that way, life sounds incredibly short. And when you’re 72, it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out you’ve already used most of yours time.

But lately I’ve been thinking about the other side of that equation.

Life is short when you measure what’s left.

But life can be remarkably long when you measure everything it has contained.

When I look backward, I don’t really see 72 years. I see different lives.

I see the kid I was growing up in Reno.

I see a young man washing dishes, never imagining that decades later he’d be writing something called “Random Thoughts of a Former Dishwasher”.

I see jobs and businesses, successes and failures, risks that worked and others that didn’t. People I hired. People I fired. People who believed in me and people who didn’t.

I see meeting Mary and building a life together. I see children arriving and then, to0 fast, those children becoming adults. Then grandchildren arrived.

I see people I loved who are no longer here. And people I’m incredibly fortunate to still have sitting beside me.

When you put all of that together, 72 years doesn’t seem particularly short. Sometimes it feels as though I’ve already lived several different lives.

Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy describe an idea in their book “The Gap and the Gain” that applies to more than achievement.

We naturally look forward and measure ourselves against some ideal. Where should I be? What haven’t I accomplished? What’s missing?

That’s the Gap.

The problem is the ideal keeps moving. Reach one goal and another appears beyond it.

Their advice is simple: turn around. Instead of measuring the distance between where you are and where you wish you were, measure the distance between where you started and where you are now.

That’s the Gain.

Looking forward from 72 can be sobering. How many family gatherings are left? How many summers, trips, rounds of golf, ordinary Tuesday afternoons?

I don’t know. None of us do.

But turn around, and the view changes completely. Look how far you’ve traveled.

All the people. All the laughter and heartbreak. All the dumb decisions you somehow survived. All the things that once seemed terribly important and turned out not to matter much.

And all the seemingly insignificant moments that turned out to matter enormously.

That’s a lot of living.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the richness of a life has surprisingly little to do with the number of years in it. It has everything to do with what we put into those years.

And mostly, I think, it’s the people.

It’s remarkable how a person’s name can transport you back 30, 40 or 50 years. Someone you haven’t thought about in decades suddenly appears in your mind, and an entire chapter of your life comes rushing back — the place, the people, what you were doing, who you were then.

Some people stay with us for most of the journey. Others walk beside us for only a few miles. Both can matter.

There are people who taught me things without ever knowing they were teaching me.

People who gave me chances. People who challenged me. People who disappointed me, and people I disappointed.

People who changed the direction of my life without either of us realizing it at the time.

Here’s another thing I’ve learned: the important moments rarely announce themselves when they arrive. It’s just dinner. Just a conversation. Just sitting around a table. Just another day.

Then 20 or 30 years pass, and you’d give almost anything to sit at that same table, with those same people, one more time.

Which makes me wonder how many moments happening right now will someday feel exactly that way.

A piece of land exists for thousands of years.

People don’t.

Families arrive, build houses, raise children, plant things, start businesses, grow old. Then another generation takes their place.

The land remains. The people change.

There’s something humbling about that. For a little while, we get a turn — to raise a family, build something, love people, screw things up and, hopefully, fix most of them.

I don’t find that depressing. I find it motivating. Because I’m still getting my turn.

The point isn’t to stare at the calendar and worry about how many squares remain. It isn’t to frantically cram more accomplishments into them either. It’s to recognize their value.

Spend them with people you love. Go places. Try things. Have long conversations. Take the trip when you can. Sit around the table a little longer. Call someone you haven’t talked to in a while.

Tell people what they mean to you while they can still hear it.

Don’t postpone everything until that magical time when life finally settles down. Because I’m beginning to suspect life never really settles down. And that’s okay.

Leah, Jack and Adam-

You’re looking at the road from the opposite direction I am.

Most of your 4,000 weeks are still ahead of you.

Most of mine are behind me.

But here’s something interesting: neither of us gets 4,000 weeks today. We each get this one. And then, if we’re fortunate, we get another.

So, work hard. Dream big. Build things. Accomplish things you’re proud of. But don’t get so busy building a life that you forget to live one.

Pay attention to the people sitting around the table. Go places. Try things.

Take pictures — but put the phone down sometimes. Collect accomplishments but collect memories too.

And occasionally, look back. Look at where you started. Look at the people you’ve loved, the places you’ve been, the chances you’ve taken, the mistakes you’ve survived, the things you’ve built.

Look at how far you’ve come.

Then look forward again. There’s still life to be lived.

Life is short. No argument from me.

But maybe — if we fill it with people we love and experiences worth remembering — life isn’t quite as short as we thought.