RULE TO BREAK

“Tomorrow is another day”

You know how easy it is to fritter away an hour, or a morning, without meaning to. Well, hard as it is to believe this when you’re young, it’s just as easy to fritter away a whole life. Be conscious of where your time is going, because that’s where your life is going.

Perhaps you spend several hours a day playing computer games. Is that why humans evolved? Or maybe you watch endless TV, involving yourself in other people’s lives – possibly even fictional – rather than living your own. Or you might be waiting for that perfect job to come along, or for any job to come along. And meantime you’re just metaphorically twiddling your thumbs. You know you’re wasting time, but you won’t carry on for ever. You’ll change your ways soon.

Look, the easiest time to change bad habits is now. If you’re not going to give up wasting time now, while you’re acknowledging that it needs to happen, why would you give up tomorrow or next month?

If this is you, stop it. Stop it now. This will become all your life is worth, if you let it. Make every day count for something – however small – and recognize that you deserve to have a life that’s worth living. Don’t get sucked into pointlessness.

Of course you can watch a bit of TV, play computer games from time to time, wait for a good job (but do something while you’re waiting, rather than nothing). Life is precious and frittering away even a year or two of it when you’re young is more than you can spare. I don’t care if you’re not doing something ‘worthy’. It’s fine with me if you’re not ‘furthering your career’ or ‘making something of yourself’ or following any other pompous edict. But I do care that you piece together a life that has some meaning.

You could make a difference to other people. You could get out and enjoy the countryside. You could develop a skill – another language, skateboarding, flower arranging. Just keep learning and growing. Maybe your job is stimulating, or you’re raising a family. These things can be enough – for a while. But all those little things you do, day in and day out, from signing forms to doing the laundry, will be what make up your life. You probably can’t avoid most of them from time to time, but listen to life whooshing through the gaps between the chores, and let it carry you along somewhere, rather than simply pass you by.