A deadline means a Treasure chest of memories beats a box of cash
Someone who faced a terminal deadline said this to me…
I met a young
Jan lived with his wife and nine-year-old daughter. He’d transferred most of his business online and could operate from anywhere.
We met a few times whenever I visited Gran. Back then “online” people were as rare as kryptonite. He shared his story in dribs and drabs.
He told me that he was heading towards a deadline. In his case a literal deadline. He’d welcomed the gift of a double lung transplant a few years before. His deadline, the point after taxes would no longer bother him, arrived about 6 years after the transplant. He felt blessed with this replacement set, even though they would not last long. And even though he would not get a second set.
Before this transplant he’d envisaged retiring a few decades hence. This deadline focused him. His wife and daughter, always important, suddenly became urgent. Money, always urgent, suddenly lost importance. A treasure chest of memories beats a box of cash as a legacy, he said.
We waste time on trivia while immortal. When we hold a boarding pass for the ferry across the River Styx we make decisions fast. We focus on important stuff, not urgent stuff. Important stuff becomes urgent only when we make it so.
He no longer feared life. He no longer fretted over embarrassing himself. He cared not a whit what others felt about the road he chose to follow. He sucked the life out of each day, giving the important people in his life the best gift he could. His time.
I was humbled. I fretted about trivia while procrastinating on the important stuff. And I complained a whole lot more about my piddly challenges.
Today reminded me about him. I woke up to glorious sunshine, unusual enough in Norway to provoke the natives into faking illness and basking unclothed outside.
It’s easy to “invest” these days at “the office”, too guilty to steal a few fun hours. As if another hour researching websites could should compete with drawing pictures on the floor with my nine-year-old daughter.