Counted Hours

So this is one of my rambling messes that makes my mom think I am slightly insane.... Good luck navigating through it.

Here is how I look at life. If you don't have a picture to show or a story to tell from every day, what is the point? If you can't look back and remember each day of the short period of time we call life, are we really living?

There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week (168 hours), 52.177 weeks in a year (365 days, 8,760 hours) and in an average lifetime of about 70-85 years, that's 657,000 hours (75 years). That's a big number, but not a lot of time. Considering the fact that doing laundry takes easily 1-2 hours, walking your dog takes 30 minutes, and getting out of bed takes 5-10 minutes. That's 3,190 hours in a lifetime of 75 years dedicated to getting out of bed. (That is considering you take 7 minutes to get out of bed.) That makes time seem a lot more precious (or at least it should). So, when you look at it from that perspective, you don't have a lot of time to... Do what you love, be the person you saw yourself as a 1st grader, and once you realize you can’t  be that person because it is physically impossible to have x-ray vision, you strive to be the person you developed in your mind during the 4 crazy years of school we call high school.

        But back up.  Every single day has some kind of reason and beauty to it.  Monday may be the day to be completely stressed but when you get home from work or school you plop yourself down onto your bed and listen to your favorite song and the peace it brings to you is amazing.  That somehow, gets turned into a story.  Not a story to tell to your extensive family at Christmas dinner.  Maybe to you, it isn’t something to share with your parents and brother at dinner that night.  Maybe it is a story you just keep to yourself.  It is a small treasure you just keep for you, so next Monday, you remember it and you save yourself from your day eating you up and making you a stress basket.  Monday is now not wasted and you have your own story for that day. There is something small and absolutely amazing to everyday and if we were to always look back and remember them, we would see our past, our yesterday, in a brighter light.

People seem to look at things as a big picture.  In the year 2013 what did you accomplish?  You may look back and see straight A’s, making a sports team, getting a promotion at work, but you don’t see the true happy moments from the year.  But what if you were to pick it apart?  Take each week from the 52.177 weeks in a year and put it into its own corner of the 52.177 cornered shape we call life.  Within each corner are 7 cupboards, and in each cupboard is maybe only one shelf… or maybe 10.  On each shelf is that small beautiful thing that acts as a 7 watt light bulb that helps light up the cupboard.  If we can light up each cupboard with maybe only 1 light bulb, maybe 10 light bulbs, we can light up that corner.  Now that corner stands out right?  So how about making each corner stand out so when you look at your many cornered shape, it’s bright!  There are also a few signs in the middle with your great accomplishments from that bunch of 8,760 hours. (because of course, those can’t be forgotten).

Each 7 watt light bulb that you put on the shelf may be a light bulb for different reasons.  You had your favorite dinner, you listened to a new song and it is officially your favorite, your brother and you got along all day, maybe you just thought of something that made you laugh.  Or there are the bigger moments.  Your first kiss, you hung out with your best friend all day, you and a group of people went to Lake Tahoe, you went to your first dance or you went to prom.  One light bulb is never brighter than the other because it represents something that you have a picture for.  A light bulb is a light bulb because it obviously means enough to you to be something that affected your mood in a positive way.

        There is one problem with light bulbs.  They break easily.  You break easily.  Those happy moments get snatched and thrown onto the ground and you watch them shatter into a million pieces.  You only took it off the shelf to look at it for a minute, you meant no harm.  But so much damage came from such little and innocent intentions… That is why shelves are so important.  When you look at your glowing cupboards, they are meant to looked at, not analyzed and examined to figure out why they glow.  They just do.  They make you feel good and comforted.  They make you know that you are doing something with your life and somebody if not today it will make a big impact.

        So going back to the beginning of this big rambling mess, “If you don't have a picture to show or a story to tell from every day, what is the point? If you can't look back and remember each day of the short period of time we call life, are we really living?” I guess what I am trying to say by that is that every day is there for a reason.  It is another 24 hours that helps add up to maybe your total of only 113,880 hours or to your 788,400 hours of life.

I’m looking at those number and they look so small….