The SpoonFed Ideas Newsletter

Every Sunday, I promise to give you three things.

• One idea.
• One action.
• One update.

All to supercharge your life and help you make use of the short time you have here.

the idea.

Everyone has a bar above their heads. You may not always see it, but it's there. A bar detailing exactly how much more time you have with them. It's not because you or they are about to die... it's something even worse. You're simply too busy to ever bother seeing them again.

At some point in time, each person in your life has a "last time." When was the last time you hung out with your old childhood friend? What if I told you the time they called you a "poo poo head" and shoved dirt up your nose was the last time you were ever going to see them again? Sure, maybe you have 50 more years to live but in those 50-some odd years, they're never going to cross your path or call you a "poo poo head" ever again. Isn't that sad?

This is my Yale med school class.

I'm the dude in the red shirt.

I spent four years with these people. I saw them day in and day out. But after graduation... pretty much never again.

We all dispersed across the country (some even across the world) to pursue our respective dreams and careers. In the seven years of time that have passed, I've seen literally just three of them.

Three of them.

One guy I saw just once, and the other guy maybe just two more times.

Whether it's your mother, your brother, or your hamster... everyone has a shelf-life... a shelf life surprisingly smaller than you realize.

Take your mom and dad for instance. Let's say you're 30. Assuming you don't live with them, how many more times do you get to see them? They're probably already in their mid-50s. Let's say they live to 77. How many more times do you get to see them in the next 22 years?

• There's Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. (2 x 22 = 44 times)
• Maybe there's a trip together every couple of years. (7 times)
• Random special occasions like a wedding, birth of grandkids, etc (5 more times)

That's 56 more times.

For many others, it's going to be way lower than that. Probably in the low double digits. For some, you are already in your last ten encounters.

And that's when the realization hit me. The majority of your people in your life have already become ghosts. These are people that you hear about and think about from time to time, but realistically will never see again. They are technically still alive, but from your perspective, they might as well be dead.

As for the people we do get to see on a daily basis? The guy handing you your coffee, the neighbor you occasionally wave hi to... even though we see them all the time, they don't matter because we treat them as NPCs. But if you treat them as sort of background filler, the ornaments for the backdrop of your life, they up treating you the same as well.

And that's how you get trapped living in a land of ghosts and NPCs.

(The long-form version of this idea is found here)

the action.

That's why procrastination is so dangerous. It always tricks you into thinking there's going to be more time. There's always tomorrow. Truth is, time is really just an illusion. There's a finite amount of tomorrows; one day, you will run out. Whatever thing, person, or dream is most important to you, make it happen today.

Be intentional with your time and, most importantly, your relationships. You can either intentionally expand the number of encounters you have with the people you love, or you can make the few remaining ones you do have... count.

Or why not both? Quantity and quality don't have to be mutually exclusive.

the update.

That's what I intend to do. I am about to embark on a 3-week trip to China to visit my grandma and a whole host of relatives. By the time you are reading this, I will most likely already be there. I've scheduled this post in advance because I have no idea if I will have access to any of this beyond the Great Firewall of China.

I haven't seen this part of my family in 14 years. I already know I am going to get a little bit emotional at how much older they will look, at how much time has already past. In my mind, they are all still frozen in time... stuck in the 90s from when my memory of them was the strongest... preserved in this little mental time capsule I fondly think about.

I will regret not having better Chinese. I will regret not having connected with them. I will regret not being able to connect on a deeper level due to this language barrier. Either way, the past is the past. I can only enjoy the time I still have and strive to be even better tomorrow.

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