YOLO

YOLO. You only live once. This has become quite the popular catch phrase. I have seen it used for people to take chances, take trips, spend lavishly, face fears. You name it, and it can pretty much be applied. 

Let’s think about this another way…reworded. Instead of “you only live once,” let’s rephrase this to “you only have one life to live.” Think about that. You only have one life. That’s it. And it’s the one you are living. 

Let that sink in.

A while back I started really thinking about this concept. This isn’t a practice life and I do not get a do-over. This is it. My one chance. That got me thinking about what I can do to live right, to get the most out of this one life I have been given. I’m not necessarily looking to avoid making mistakes or to try to live perfectly (I’m no fool), but I did start to look at some things differently.

When I was a classroom teacher, we were big on “backward design,” meaning we would determine the knowledge and skills we needed the students to learn, then we would determine the assessments we would use, and lastly we would plan the day-to-day lessons and activities to reach the desired outcomes. I started to think about how I might apply this strategy to my daily life…you know, the only one that I have been given.

I pictured it…I am eighty years old (that’s pretty young in my opinion, but I had to start somewhere), what do I want my life to look like? Who is there? What are we doing? 

In my imagination, I am surrounded by children and grandchildren. I would like to think my children live nearby, they are close to me and my husband, and they are close with one another. I imagine we have Sunday dinners together as often as we can, and we spend holidays and birthdays and other important days eating, sharing, laughing, and enjoying one another’s company. I imagine I am in good spirits and in good health. I would like to think we are financially able to take care of ourselves and to still do some of the things we enjoy doing. I imagine we travel together as a family whenever we can, even though it will be difficult juggling schedules and commitments. In my dream future, spending time together and our relationships with one another are important to us and we make it a point to show it.

Now, I know kids grow up and they move and they have jobs and commitments and lots of things get in the way of picture perfect. I get it. But hey, I was imagining what my picture perfect could be. 

The point in all of this was to then backward plan the day-to-day that could hopefully lead to some form of this vision. I had to assess how I spend my time today, how I treat people today, what I focus on today, what I mark as important today. I realized I cannot just show up to my eightieth birthday party and expect things to be a certain way. Instead, I know I have to work on it now, and I have to make it a priority today.

Now call me crazy, but in all of this, I also wondered what it would be like if there was some log or record of how I spent my time. If there was, what would it show? If there was some lifelong record of how many hours I spent watching TV, shopping, cooking, sleeping, bathing, working, driving, talking, praying, what would that record look like? If I could look back and see how much time I spent exercising, playing, visiting, laughing, would I be satisfied with the totals? I mean, if this is the only life I have to live, how was I living it?

I am not trying to be all doom and gloom, rather just to take a step back and to ask myself, is what I am doing today getting me closer to where I want to be tomorrow? In the realm of backward design, is my day-to-day matching up with my long term goals?

To be sure, I wrote out some long term goals. First, I closed my eyes, I imagined my eightieth birthday (and I looked GOOD—hey, it’s my dream, right?!?). Then I listed out what I envisioned my life would be like then in terms of family, finances, my life’s work, my possessions, and the legacy I would leave behind. I really and truly wrote these things out and then asked myself the question, what will I do now to secure this future?

I would like to tell you my life looked dramatically different the very next day, but that’s just not true. Change takes time and I am okay with that. What has happened are little changes over time. When the kids ask, “Mom, will you play this game with me?” I ignore the housework and say yes. When it’s time for dinner, I look past the inconvenience of carrying food and plates to the table and instead enjoy that we are all seated together where we can pray and eat as a family. When hubby asks if I will go to Home Depot with him and it will just be the two of us, I ignore how much I dislike going to Home Depot and I hold his hand the entire way there. When a friend asks if we can spend time together, I try to clear things out of the way so we can talk. When I can tell I am in need of a friend, I am sure to call one up and lean on them for support. When it comes time to focusing on my life’s work, I am learning to face my fears and to get it done. 

The truth is, you only live once, but I do think we can try and try to get it right. The truth is, with some vision and intentionality, I think we get closer and closer to what makes us happy. The truth is, we can use this one life to live the life we are meant to live and to be the person we are meant to be…one day at a time.