Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 45 years old, wrapped up another year of life, and thus filled in another row on my "death calendar." That's 2,340 weekly boxes filled in, 1,660 left to go if I live to about 77 years old. Every Friday when I conclude the work week, I grab a pen and color in another week, asking myself the same question:
Did I actually do what matters?
This weekly ritual is sobering for me. Not in a heavy, depressing way, but in that pause-and-actually-think-about-your-life way that we all need but rarely take.
The opportunity to wrestle with my own priorities have changed how I live. When my kids and I are eating dinner together, my phone (usually) stays in my pocket. With my wife's help, we're making time for family and have several evenings a week available for quality time together. We're currently re-evaluating our family vision so we have more intentional filters for what we say "no" and "yes" to in the future. Revolutionary, right? But man, it matters. These little shifts compound over time.
A few weeks ago my kids challenged me to solve a difficult 3D maze. After some difficulty, they taught me a trick: start at the end and work backward. Life is kind of the same. When I imagine myself at 90, suddenly all the stuff that seems urgent today looks pretty unimportant. They shrink to nothing when viewed from the perspective of box 4,000 on my 4K Weeks poster.
The poster doesn't care about my excuses or rationalizations of why I feel like something is urgent or important. It just counts. Another week gone. Did it count for something?
I've started exercising more regularly (because I want to actually make it to box 4,000 in decent shape so I can better support my kids' families when they're having kids). I'm eating better (turns out you can't fuel a meaningful life on ice cream and determination alone). I deleted social media apps from my phone (because I didn't like how much they were prompting me to disconnect from the present). I'm saying no to good things so I can say yes to the best things.
The math is sobering but also liberating. I'm not trying to optimize every moment or live under the crushing weight of making every day profound. I'm just trying to align my daily choices with what my 90-year-old self will be grateful for.
I still struggle to make some of the really big choices that the death calendar surfaces for me. I reflect on them each week, but the pain of changing some things often feels higher than the pain of just going along with it for another week. But checking another box each week reminds me that weeks turn into months, which turn into years. Time passes whether I'm intentional or not. I get to choose what fills those weeks—reaction or mission.
So here's to 45. Here's to the boxes already filled and the ones yet to come. And here's to the weekly practice of evaluating the question:
Am I doing what matters?
The poster keeps counting. So do I.
