I Have Only 40 Summers Left

Births. Weddings. Funerals.

These are the events that force us to stop, reflect and evaluate exactly what we are doing with our lives. Sadly, I had a funeral of a dear colleague I attended at the end of June. I saw her on the last day of school two weeks before, happy and healthy. She smiled at me and as always, she offered some type of information about a music show in the area or a song I should listen to. Since I taught music at our elementary school, she always made a point to encourage me in that area.

She was an older woman, born in the early 1950’s but her smile seemed to stem from this youthful place that made her work at our school a perfect fit. Hearing all the anecdotes during the service about her compassion was proof of a life well lived.

Then it dawned on me suddenly. 40 summers. I only have 40 summers left.

That thought raced through my mind as I sat in the pews absorbing the powerful melody of ‘Oh Great Thou Art’, one of my favorite gospel hymns. If you take the average age of my grandmothers when they passed away, it comes up to 80 years. Celebrating my 40th birthday this year, I realized I could have a shot at living to the average age of my grandmothers.

If so, that means I have only 40 summers left. Half of my life is already over.

That’s an eye opening way to see our relationship with time. When the term relationship comes up, we automatically assume it’s with people. But relationships can be formed with a myriad of things – including people, money and with time. That’s right. Time.

What’s your relationship with time?

In my book Debt to Destiny: Creating Financial Freedom from the Inside Out, I talk about our relationship with money and how we evaluate it when it comes in and out of our lives. But I also charge my readers to see their relationship with time as a part of their financial journey. You traded your time for that money. Is it time well spent? After work, we watch hours and hours of TV or scroll through social media mindlessly.

All the while time is steadily passing.

Since I came to this realization, I monitor my time more closely. My dynamic business coach, Tony Magee calls it ‘white space.’ – that space before and after work which belongs to you. At work, that time belongs to your job. They are paying you for that time and value you are putting into those hours. If you have a family, you get home and that time goes to them usually. We cook dinner, we fold clothes and we bath the children, then the house is quiet. It’s finally our time. But, for some of us, there’s free time right after work. We have a choice with how to spend it.

With only 40 summers left, I want to be more diligent in how I allocate my ‘free time’. Am I contributing? Did I help others? Am I participating in a purpose that’s bigger than me and my personal goals? Am I being creative and are my creations making my family and my community better?

I ask myself these questions intentionally because I only have 40 summers left.

These life milestones of births, weddings and funerals make us keenly aware of time passing. But unlike other resources, it’s the one resource we can never get back.

So let me ask you, how many ‘summers’ could you have left? Are you content with the progress of your previous summers? What can you do to improve the remaining ones?

Food for thought. Food for summer.

The funeral service ended with the beautiful life tribute song called ‘Ashokan Farewell’. I smiled to myself, “How did she know?” She couldn’t have known that this was my favorite song on the violin. It was written for the PBS Civil War documentary and anyone who knows me knows I love all things Lincoln and Civil War era. This song was the first song I learned how to play by ear on the violin. And here she was, once again, offering me a final gift of music, even during her own funeral ceremony.

I glanced at her coffin and softly smiled. Knowing her was truly time well spent.