We All Have 24 Hours | From Mr. Houseful

There is truth to the notion that we all operate with the same 24 hours every day. It’s how we choose to live within those 24 hours that define us. We can rest, lounge-around, work, garden, play, eat, read, (pauses for a breath) date, meet, and a host of other things that I’m not thinking about. Funny thing is, it doesn’t matter what you do. The time to do it is finite.

It will always only be 24 hours. You will often believe that it isn’t enough. You will often believe that its taking too long. You will often wish for a distant 24 hours in the future where the current 24 hours you exist in will be a memory. Sometimes you’ll spend this current 24 hours dreaming of the good things you will experience in another 24 hours. You’ll say “8760 hours from now, I’ll be in…” Or “…I’ll be able to…” Or “…we’ll get to see…” fill in the blanks.

When you were younger, you counted down the days that these “insignificant” 24 hours would end and your much-anticipated, “significant” 24 hours would begin. You scoffed at those that had experience in how to handle 24 hour issues. After all, their 24 hours definitely had to be different from yours. You looked at these people and called them out of touch and antiquated. “No one cares what you do in hour 8 on Saturdays mom!” Who really wants to hear the stories about how you were about to get all of your chores done within 2% of your 24 hours? I mean, seriously! Your 24 hours and your father’s 24 hours must have been different back then. No one had digital watches. No one’s watch was ‘smart’. The 24 hours they’re stuck in is so 262800 hours ago.

I wonder, however, if it would change things for us to begin to seize these current hours; make the most of them. Tackle each of our 24 hours in 2% chunks; ticking off a grand to-do list as we go. I wonder how difficult it would be to treat this 24 hour day as if it were our last. As if we wouldn’t get another. As if wasting it would leave us unfulfilled. As if this 24 hours was simply too important to be like the previous ones. As if, right