My teenage daughter has a very eclectic taste in music. She grew up listening to everything from Nirvana to Snoop Dog; from The Beatles to Elton John; from Reba and Dolly to Florence and the Machine. Lately she has discovered Sade.
I call her latest trend of favorites “Showboat Music”.
Anytime one of these melodic slower female crooning songs starts playing I instantly picture myself in a dining room on a cruise ship. (Okay, maybe set in the 50’s at the height of Hollywood glamour with glossy curls of hair, dresses made of silk and satin, and men smoking cigars- you know you’re picturing it.)
Well, Sawyer (the girl child), also insists on playing DJ on the drive into school each morning. I sometimes roll my eyes and look in the rearview mirror to meet my son’s eyes and have an instant understanding… “Oh. It’s one of THOSE mornings.” He’s more like me in being upbeat and wanting happy pump-you-up music to get us ready to tackle the day.
Sawyer prefers to “ease” into her days.
Well, I’m glad because after I dropped her off at school Friday morning, her chosen station kept playing- let’s face it, I’m too lazy to bother switching the stations.
Anyway, I was happily tuning out the song and thinking about what I new battle I was going to wage for the day until a line from the song stabbed my consciousness back to reality.
“We lose every moment we waste.”
Wow. That one grabbed me. Because how true is it? We do.
Each moment we take in our lives to put something off and procrastinate is essentially a lost moment. We can’t get it back. Time marches on. We aren’t actively living if we are wasting the time.
It can be applied to our jobs. We all have some task at work we would prefer to not do so we put it off for another day. It never makes the task easier. In fact, it often makes it worse.
It can be applied to our friendships. Do we avoid actively maintaining our relationships with our friends? Or does the business of life take precedence?
It can be applied to our family. Are we making every effort to spend time with our family while we still walk this earth? It can be applied to ourselves. Do we look in the mirror and give the person looking back at us enough of our time. Do we prioritize our mental health needs? Do we commit to healthy eating habits? Do we give our bodies power by exercising?
Time is one thing that will run out for each and every one of us. It’s “time” to start using it wisely.
