Use Your Time Wisely

It's the only thing we can't buy more of.

Photo by Abdul A on Unsplash

Last week, I heard a quote on TikTok that really resonated with me. I made a quick video using the quote and posted it on my own social media. I didn’t really think anything of it. I just knew it had an impact on me and I wanted to share it.

Well, after getting a combined 257,000 views across Tiny Ambition Instagram and TikTok (and counting), it’s clear that it struck a cord with a lot of folks out there.

If you haven’t seen the video, here is the transcribed quote below. Fair warning - it’s going to make you feel things (some good, some bad, depending on your perspective).

In 100 years, so like 2123, we will all be buried with our families and friends, strangers will live in our homes that we worked so hard to build, and someone else will own everything we have today. Most of our possessions will be given away or thrown out and destroyed, including the car that we spent our fortune on and will probably be scrapped. Our descendants will hardly know who we are nor will they remember us. I mean, how many of us know who our grandfather’s father was? After we die, we will be remembered for a few more years, and then we’re just a portrait on someone’s wall. And a few decades later, our history, photos and deeds disappear into history’s oblivion. We won’t even be memories. If we pause one day to analyze these questions, perhaps we would understand how pointless it is for us to worry about 95% of the things that consume our minds daily. If we could only think about this, surely our approaches, our thoughts, would change and we would do things differently. Perhaps we would feel free to enjoy ourselves, and our lives that we’re living. Take these thoughts into the rest of your day this week, this year and remember the saying, “if it’s not gonna matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset by it.”

Ok, let’s take a second and just take a deep breath. I know that quote is a lot and it inspired A LOT of responses - some that I was expecting and some that I wasn’t.

If you asked me what I think of this quote I would say that it makes me feel comforted to know that my life is fleeting and ephemeral. That all I will need to concern myself with in the grand scheme of things is whether or not I led a life that was kind and full of love for others and left the planet with a minimal impact.

This is really based around my core belief (fostered during my time completing an anthropology degree), that humans as a species believe they are far more important individually than they really are. In terms of geological time, we are literally a blip in the history of earth. Less than a blip even. To be precise, our species, Homo Sapiens, has only been around for 0.007% of Earth’s entire history.

By no means do I think our lives our meaningless. I think our lives as humans on this planet can be incredibly meaningful. But I am under no illusion as to what is going to happen to me - and more importantly - my stuff, after I’m gone.

I also want to make it clear that our short time on this earth also does not mean that we should be go out and create chaos and pain. That’s actually the complete opposite of the philosophy at the heart of the quote in my opinion.

I want to break down the different responses I got on the video, because I think they can give us some incredible insights into what it means to be human and how we can live lives that have an impact while we’re here.

(Strap in, this is going to be a long one).