Take Two #13: The Time of our Lives

The New Year's resolution is all about getting a fresh start, about examining your life and seeing which parts of it you like and which parts you might want to tweak for the better. I know I'm not the only one examining last year's expenses and seeing if I can't curb those bank account crushing impulse buys. But this is not a column about saving money. There are lots of places on the internet and lots of books written by people better informed about finances than I am for that information. No, I want to discuss time. Or rather, how we use it.

As much as we say time is money so many of us don't actually value our time. That can be as concrete as not charging enough for specialized labor – or forgetting how much time it takes us to earn that dress or that flatscreen – or as abstract as allowing others to walk over us and dictate what we do with our lives. Valuing our time can also be as simple as remembering to enjoy the silence and indulge in the moment.

In honor of the New Year, I thought it would be fun to look at how we Americans spend our time. Over a lifetime of 70 years, the average American will spend two weeks kissing someone, four and a half years in a car (a year of that stuck in traffic or at a red light), nearly two and a half years grooming, almost that much time shopping, about 13 years working and nearly 25 years sleeping. Add on to that the year we spend on our cell phones, the nine years we spend watching television (absorbing over two million commercials) and the whole year we spend just looking for things and we get a whopping total of 58.5 years. Subtract that from the average lifespan of 70 and we're left with 11.5 years. It's enough to make my heart race. How about you?

[These statistics are estimated averages utilizing the American population ages 15 and up.]

Don't panic yet. It isn't as bad as the numbers make it sound. Statistics have the doom and gloom ability to make everything sound bad, as if everything we do is just bringing us closer to our ultimate end. And while I guess in a way that's true, the bare numbers do not express how we felt about each of those minutes, hours and days. For example, while that year spent looking for things was probably irritating, not all of those 9 years of television were spent rotting on a couch. Media is powerful, entertaining and fun. What about those 25 years of sleeping? I doubt many people would argue that sleeping is an arduous experience. Oh the hardship.

It all comes down to what we get out of our time. If we enjoyed those moments, learned something or grew as people can we really say they were wasted?

Regardless, our lives can sometimes take on the characteristics of a doomsday clock. Time is beyond our control. Even if we do manage to master time travel, we'll still age. Existing in a different time-space continuum doesn't alter that fact. And so what if we start living for 500 years? Not only would that be disastrous for the planet, but we'd still have an end date. The average life expectancy used to be between 20 and 30 years. Now we live three to four times that and it still isn't enough.

The complete lack of control – just thinking about time uses time – is enough to send anyone reeling into an anxious spiral. The way to get out of that spiral is to change our attitudes.

Though both are valuable, time, unlike money, isn't something we can quantify and divvy out at the end of the day. We shouldn't spend time. The very idea implies that we should be able to hoard it as well, that our actions have a direct impact on our time bank account. Instead we should revel in it like kids playing in a river. They know that locking their limbs Red Rover-style isn't going to stop the current. Like them, we need to learn how to enjoy being in it. Time isn't money. It's life.

Maybe you have already made your New Year's Resolutions, but if you haven't or if you are willing to reconsider them, please remember that it isn't how much time we think we have that should define our actions. When you look back on your days, weeks and years what do you want to remember?

As one of my favorite characters says, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us” (Gandalf in the 2001 film LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring).