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A Million for 86,400?


Let's wave a magical wand and—BAM!—I turn to you and offer you $1,000,000 in cash as a gift.

No strings attached.

Would you take it?

If you didn't immediately say, "YES," there may be some deeper-rooted trust issues we need to unpack. Regardless, like most things that appear too good to be true, there's a catch.

The million dollars is real. It's yours.

But you won't wake up tomorrow morning.

Suddenly, the brain starts spinning. Thoughts are racing at incalculable speeds trying to determine risk versus reward. A million dollars is a TON of money. Is it even possible to spend that much in one day? What could I buy? Who could I give it to? Could I somehow make this worth it?

But there's that nagging thought in the back of your brain—or the front, for many of you:

$1,000,000...but I don't wake up tomorrow.

Hard pass.

Now I'm going to practice a skill I'm still working on: listening to understand instead of listening to respond.

"So, if I heard you correctly, you would pass on $1 million?"

And now I'll draw a conclusion—a skill many of my past and future sixth graders could use some additional practice with:

What you're saying is that your life is worth more than $1 million. I don't think there's any amount of money that could shift that belief. $1 billion? No. A trillion? Still no.

So why are we wasting it?

There are 86,400 seconds in every day.

I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to wasting a ridiculous number of them. My phone is usually the culprit. Meowdoku and YouTube Shorts have somehow convinced me that "just a couple minutes" is a legitimate measurement of time.

It is not.

But let's put those 86,400 seconds into perspective.

Depending on which estimates you use, over the course of an average American lifespan, enormous chunks of our lives disappear into things we barely think about:

  • Nearly three decades sleeping.

  • More than a decade working.

  • Years watching TV, playing video games, scrolling social media, doing chores, eating, shopping, commuting, and sitting in traffic wondering why the person in front of us apparently forgot what a green light means.

None of those things are necessarily bad. We have to sleep. We have to work. Laundry apparently continues to be a requirement no matter how many times I do it.

But after everything that life requires from us, the amount of truly discretionary time we have is surprisingly small.

And then there are our kids.

There's a popular way of visualizing childhood as roughly 936 weeks from birth until a child turns 18.

Nine hundred thirty-six sounds like a lot.

Until you start crossing them off.

Birthdays. Christmases. First days of school. Last days of school. Ballgames. Concerts. Recitals. Cheer competitions. Musicals. Vacations. Random Tuesday nights. Sitting in the car. Driving them somewhere they absolutely could have told you they needed to be before you got comfortable.

And eventually, lasts.

The last time you carry them.

The last time they crawl into your bed.

The last first day of elementary school.

The last family vacation before they're an adult.

The weird part is that most of the time, you don't know it's the last time while it's happening.

Amanda and I finished The Office (again) and I am certain that Andy has one of the most profound quotes in the entire series that has stuck with me. "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." 

I only have two more summers before Kayden turns 18.

Four with Rose.

Eight with Nari.

That number hit me differently when I actually counted them.

Two.

Four.

Eight.

So few.

And that's assuming everything goes according to plan. Life has made it abundantly clear to me that it doesn't particularly care about our plans.

People come into our lives. People leave. Relationships change. Kids grow up. Animals that have slept at the foot of our beds for years eventually aren't there anymore. Sometimes things end gradually. Sometimes everything changes on an otherwise completely ordinary Tuesday.

We don't get to know ahead of time.

That's uncomfortable.

But maybe it's also the point.

I've had periods in my life where I couldn't see the way out. Where "things will get better" sounded less like encouragement and more like something I'd like to punch someone for saying.

If I could go back and sit next to myself during some of those moments, what would I tell him?

Probably something painfully cliché:

Keep going. Find a reason to keep going. This isn't forever.

And my past self would probably tell present-day me to pound sand.

Fair.

Because when you're buried underneath something, you don't have the perspective of the person who eventually climbed out of it.

But that's exactly the problem.

We have a tendency to treat how life feels right now as evidence of how life will always feel.

It isn't.

Some seasons are brutal. Some are incredible. Most are somewhere in between. And sometimes the thing you were convinced would break you eventually becomes something you can look back on and say, "Wow. That really sucked."

Progress.

None of this means we need to squeeze profound meaning out of every one of those 86,400 seconds.

That sounds exhausting.

I'm still going to pass out on the couch sometimes. I'm still going to doom-scroll for "just 30 more minutes." I'm going to lose my patience. I'm occasionally going to secretly roll my eyes when a kid says, "Watch this!" and then proceeds to show me something I've already watched approximately 67 times.

Being present doesn't mean being on all the time.

I think it means remembering, every once in a while, that this is it.That's the game (the game!).

This random Sunday night.

That drive to school.

Dinner around the table.

The dog lying next to you.

The text from someone you haven't heard from in a while.

Your kid yelling, "Dad! Watch this!"

They're ordinary moments.

Until they're not.

I'm notoriously hit-and-miss when it comes to communication. I'm trying to get better at that. So if I randomly reach out to you, there's probably no hidden agenda. You crossed my mind, and I'm trying to get better at actually doing something about that instead of thinking, "I should text them," and then forgetting for six months.

And if you're thinking about someone?

Reach out.

Because tomorrow morning is worth more than a million dollars.

And somehow, we got this one for free.

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