It was almost four years before I retired when I downloaded a countdown app and entered a date on my iPhone. The number was around 1400 days. Sometimes I would check the app daily. Other times a week would go by before taking a look. But the number dwindled at a painfully slow rate. It seemed as if it would be forever before I left my desk for the last time, looking down the hallway I’d traversed for 27 years. I imagined there would be tears in my eyes, the same ones that caused my eyes to brim with moisture when my first child got on the bus for kindergarten. Wait, absolutely not. Nothing like that! I would head off with the closest approximation of skipping that my petrifying body could muster and never look back. I would become young again, live an active lifestyle, lose weight and do all those things I’ve been putting off for lack of time.
1399
1398
1397
1398
1397
Well, imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that the app is still running on my phone. At some point I reset the text it displays to reflect the date we moved to Florida, our retirement destination. And here it is:
I did not fear retirement, I longed for it. But even while ticking off days to that eventual goal, I had a nagging feeling that I was also counting down the days of my life. What if I didn’t make it? What if something horrible, counting down on some unanticipated app loomed menacingly between now and then? What if my wife developed an aneurysm and needed brain surgery at day 1030 (she did, and she’s fine). And ultimately, whatever the days would bring, they were days that I only got to live once. And here I am with 2237 days less than I had way back when I started counting (1400 plus 837).
We all have a timer relentlessly ticking off the days we have left on Earth. It’s best to make the most of them. Live each day without regard for the number of days until Christmas, the end of school or a nice vacation. There’s no guarantee that waking up today is repeatable tomorrow. Counting them is just, well, a waste of time.