2022 Is Ending. Where Do You Stand?
What Did You Achieve? What Is Left?
Welcome to the paid edition of YouTopian Journey, a Substack featured publication. Each week I will be sharing unique wisdom that can help you in the daily battles that we must all fight in the game of life. Today we discuss where you stand as 2022 comes to a close.
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Did you use 2022? Or did you waste it?
“Most people these days are so spiritless, so deserted by grace. Lost in this life they cling to this life, out of nothing they become nothing, their life is a waste.”-Soren Kierkegaard
In just a few weeks, 2022 will be over.
Gone.
Finished.
The future becoming the past.
It takes with it the possibilities of tomorrow. It leaves you with questions. Painful quandaries that the multitude avoids.
But that you cannot.
What did you do this year? How did you spend it? Did you make choices that benefited you? Your career? Your future? Or did you squander it? Did you waste the year in the pursuit of the illusory? Did you make choices that had no effect and made no difference at all?
These may be difficult questions to answer. After all, no one wants to reflect on investments that didn’t pay, but cost.
And time is the biggest and most important investment we could ever make.
These questions will be uncomfortable.
They will make you question your actions, your past, your present, and your future.
Yet, answer them, we must!
Our time is the only true resource we have and that we can properly use. But so many people waste it. They delay and delay and delay. But you cannot and must not delay forever.
It will catch up to you.
And then what?
What is left?
Regret. Depression. Anger.
No positive feelings and nothing that can help you move forward. After all, it is hard to climb out of the abyss, especially if you are the one responsible for arriving there.
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”-Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
It is a hard thing to admit. We will protect our reputations, our careers, our friends, and our families. We will fight for king, for country, for our property, and our way of life.
But our time is rarely defended. It is given freely when it should be protected at all costs. We busy ourselves, falsely believing that productivity equals time well spent. Constantly on the move, we never take a moment to truly think about what we want and need. There is always some task, some meaningless objective, some meeting that we must attend.
We think this will result in a good use of our time, one that will lead us closer to our goals.
It doesn’t.
Instead, it only feeds the beast that stalks us all.
Think about it:
How many meetings this year actually made a difference in your life?
How many activities truly benefited you? Your health? Your life?
How many connections were life changing?
This cannot stand.
It isn’t too late to change.
It isn’t too late to make a choice and make a stand.
To decide on what you want and take action to get it.
To stop confusing the busyness of life with the business of life.
To take back your time and make sure that 2023 will be the best year of your life.
It is that simple and that difficult. Ultimately, only you can do it. Only you can take responsibility.
Here is how.