My Social Media-less Life

Have I had 3am thoughts before? *shrugs* Either way, here we are.

You know it’s funny, people say that you should live as if there’s no tomorrow. And I get it.

“Live your life! Do the things you want to do! Do them now! Don’t wait.”

Even Jesus said that tomorrow isn’t promised to us.

But as someone who has a personality type that is constantly looking forward to “tomorrow”, the idea of no tomorrow— for lack of a better term— terrifies me.

Recently, my mom and I were talking about how long we would like to live. (It’s a regular conversation piece, especially as we get older). She said she wants to live to be 120 because that’s how many years the Lord promised to a man in the Bible.

I simply told her that however old I live to be, I want to die on my birthday. It sounds terrible, but hear me out. If I am born and die on the same day, no one has to remember any extra days of the year. Plus, I will have lived the fullest amount of years. And it’s not like I want to die at the beginning of the day. I celebrate my 100-and-whatever birthday, go to bed that night and wake up with Jesus! It’s always made sense to me…

I said all of that to say…

I realized I’m 34. If I live to be ANYWHERE in the 100 year range, I have AT LEAST 66 more years of life.

Somehow, knowing that I have the potential to live a full life like I did these first 34 years of life at least two more times is more freeing to me than imagining that I might die tomorrow in a terrible accident of some kind.

The former makes me want to do ALL THE THINGS while the latter makes me think none of it is worth it because I won’t have the time to do them.

Of course, I get the urgency of “tomorrow isn’t promised”… but I think there’s also something to be said about looking at the unused potential of days and going, “Yeah, I can do that. Even if it’s not soon, I’ll have time to do that at some point.”

I think there’s a good balance. Sometimes finding it is hard, but right now I’m living through the “I have so much potential life left. I’m gonna go live it.”