Welcome to your die trying. Thanks, man. Hey, it’s good to be with you again.
It’s good to be with you. Don’t we sound good?
We have I don’t know. I can’t hear us.
We do we sound incredible. Okay,
okay,
we sound incredible. Thank
you girl. Welcome to this our 33rd episode.
That’s how old I am.
That’s great. So that means this episode should be like what should be I don’t know where you’re going. How would you describe yourself?
At 33? Mildly mildly sore.
Isn’t this episode will be mildly sore vision. Eyes itching.
Yeah, eyes are itching. Yeah, I’m just I’m getting old.
Hope it works out better for you than it did for Jesus that was a tough year to jingle. Driving Muay Thai is a mind
I would like for us to contemplate today a quotation. This is from someone who lived around the time of Jesus which is why I brought that up. He was born in the year four BC now you know BC is typically it means before Christ. But in academic circles now. It is said BCE, as in before the common error, or the Common Era. So it’s either before the Common Era, or the Common Era.
I was thinking before Christ’s existence.
Oh gosh, Hey, dude, I’m gonna let that sit right there. Yep. Ad stands for Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. So it was before Christ and Anna Domini. Now it is before the Common Era and the Common Era, which all tend to happen around zero. And that’s a complicated conversation we will have but there’s a man who was born in the year four, which is probably the exact same year that Jesus was born actually. And his name was Seneca. He was a Roman, satiric for sure he was a stoic philosopher primarily. And he has this wonderful quotation that it’s a little bit long, but it’s worthwhile. Mind if I share it, please. No person would give up even an inch of their estate. And the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay. Yet we easily let others encroach on our lives. Worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passers by, but to how many to each of us handout our lives were tight fisted with property and money yet think too little of wasting time. The one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers? That’s rich. I love that here ins are reading from the Stoic philosopher Seneca, often known as Seneca the younger or as some people have called him, Lucius Annaeus. Seneca
I’ll just call him Seneca. It’s so
true, isn’t it? How it is so easy for us to let people in and take over our time when we would never do that with our property, or our money. And I’ve talked about this before and I did not know this quotation from Seneca so I’m pleased to know yet again that absolutely nothing that I’ve ever thought or have done has been original. But I have said before, and I’ve used it with clients that if you think about your time like you do your money, if you budget your time, like you budget your money, or as we probably should budget our money, we would be much more cautious about how we spend it, with whom we spend it what we do with it. But we don’t I wonder why. Why do we have that blind spot?
There’s, there’s this inability, I don’t really know how to answer that question. But I was just thinking about the fact that that line that boundary that we you know, because you said letting people in to take advantage of our time is that pretty much it? Yep. And of ourselves and of ourselves. Yeah, but the the other side of that is a life of total. Not loneliness, but maybe lonely. I don’t know. I’m over here talking in circles. I get it. My point is is I’m thinking of the other side of the tracks and like okay, well, I won’t let anybody and I won’t let anyone take advantage of my time and then I’m sitting in a dark room, watching Netflix, eat roles of Toll House cookie
dough. Okay. So were you saying that if we are mindful of our overload, overly mindful of not letting people in, then we kind of create this island effect? Yes. Yes. So I guess to clarify my perspective was about letting people take advantage, right. Yeah. So not like not ever seeing people?
Well, I understand that. But I think that if you become too mindful, and I agree with not letting people take advantage of your time, but I’m thinking if we’re overly mind for for your extreme about it, then we can, of course, be not mature and are responsible with how I handle it,
I guess. Has there ever been a time when that’s been you? Where I’m overly like,
Get everyone away? Yeah, absolutely. In this profession that we’re in, and I’m surprised, and maybe you can answer this, in the funeral profession, people are very closed off, they become antisocial to a degree because of being around the people that they’re around all day long and night long, and they just don’t want to be around anybody. So they’re extremists in regards to that is that like that at all with the profession you’re in?
I’m sure that it is. For some it isn’t for me, but I’m guessing that’s more in line with that particular person’s personality than it is necessarily with the hazards of the occupation. Like for instance, if I’m an introverted person, and I am a funeral director, or I’m a therapist, or I am a minister, say, and I’m with people all day long. For an introvert that’s exhausting, because inter aversive people get their energy in time alone. So if I’m spending everything I have in my work, then I’m likely and consequently going to want to go home and be around no one. But if I’m an extra Versiv person, in a job, like these chances of my wanting to continue to be around people after I’m off, are pretty high. So I think it’s probably more personality than profession, although I’m sure that there’s a chemistry between the two. You would consider yourself extroverted. Yes. Yeah. Same here.
Yeah. But I struggle sometimes with when I’m off work, just wanting to be at home. So that’s what I was thinking about this, like extremism of going with with that quotation that you just read. I, I don’t understand why we give people so much of our time currency, because we can’t get that back. Exactly. Talk about that. Yeah. And, you know, it’s exhausting. The time that we are at work the time that we are obligated to other things. So why would we on the time that we have with ourselves and with our families, while we volunteer that out so readily? So, so easily, I guess.
Yeah. I mean, we never would do that with our other resources, right. And those other resources, property and money are renewable. Foremost, you can make more money, you’ll go to work tomorrow and make more because you made some today, and maybe you spend it that’s how jobs work. Time is a non renewable resource. There is no more time. What we have right now, is all we have what we’ve had to this point. That’s it. We’re not guaranteed anything moving forward. And it is finite. We all know, at some point, it ends. Not weird.
It’s weird to think about.
I think about it all the time. I do too.
I thought about it before I was in death care. Dying?
Oh, yeah. I’ve thought about it since well, yeah. Since I was a kid. I think probably we all do in our own way. Because those limits, I think give our lives meanings. We’ve probably talked about that in previous episode. I think knowing that there’s a finite ending, that there’s a landmark, a boundary creates meaning and purpose, and a sense of immediacy and worth and value to what we have inside this the boundary. But I know that at some point, it’s over. So that that’s kind of makes your head spin a little bit, but at the same time, it makes you realize, well, time is really all you have. So if all you have is what you have, how conscientious are we in how we use it? You know, like for instance, this podcast. This takes our time, right? And we do it for reasons for purposes. It takes time away from our families, it takes time away. It doesn’t really take time away from our work, but it takes time away from our families and anything else that we might be doing. But we do it because we believe that it has value. Purpose, holds meaning influences our own sense of the urgent and what is truly important as well. And I think that this for me, is a really good stewardship of time. But there are a lot of things I’m sure that I engage in that are probably not great examples of faithful and wise stewardship of time, like, you know, maybe binge watching a show on Hulu or Netflix or I don’t know, I can think of 1000 things that we do just to kind of pass time. And I gave a speech once about this. You’ve heard the phrase killing time. Yes. And it’s killing time. Yeah, I gave a little lecture about that once about how, you know, when we use that language, how tough that is, how harsh that is? Why would we want to kill time? Why wouldn’t we want to nurture it? cultivate it, be aware of it, use it, give birth to it, you know, be present in it, as opposed to kill anything but killing. But that’s the phrase we use? What are you doing? Oh, I’m just killing time. You know, I’ve dropped off my child for dance. Now I’ve got an hour, I’m just rather than go home and come back. I’m just killing time like, it’s so as a result, it’s a phrase that I conscientiously avoid. Because I think words matter. And I think word shape, existence and reality. And our reality would be that we’re just going to be people who kill time. I don’t want to do that.
I that’s, that’s awesome. Yeah. So to talk a little bit about a scenario if I’m a so I don’t want to there’s a couple of things that happened over the weekend, because I was off where these people had reached out to me in regards to nothing work related, but it was emergent to them. And, you know, I totally disregarded them. Because I felt that that was not taking care of my time. And I could obviously wait for a later time. And instead of driving home for the hour to kill it, to go pick your daughter up from dance, I was just thinking of, you know, the house that I grew up on, on McIntyre crossing, haven’t seen in a long time, you know, what I would have done, I would have gone and driven by there and thought about the awesome memories that I made at seven years old. And the ditch that I ran away to that we talked about in the podcast, where I just Max baseball cards and stuff. You know, those are things that I think that we we can we can do to help us continue to, to grow to honor time. I don’t think we should kill it. I think we should honor it. Right? Exactly. I don’t know if I feel like I’m talking in a circle in regards to this. But it’s something that I’m mindful of more so now than ever is this time thing. You know, I’m 33. I’m a dad of three kids. Now, my gosh, it’s crazy. I was having lunch the other day with a new friend. And he said, The nights are long, my friend, but the years are very short. That’s right. And I’m like, Good Lord. And he was of course referring to the fact that we’re in, you know, five weeks into a new baby. And I got three hours of sleep last night, you
know, for you out there who have young children, it is a very, very difficult season. It’s a hard time, it’s hard on all relationships, it’s hard on marriages, it’s just hard, it’s stressful, it’s intense, it’s anxiety producing, and it’s exhausting, so much fatigue. And so my heart goes out, I’ve been there, you’re there, a lot of us have, or, or we’ll be there. Be mindful that this time does pass. But that brings with it benefit as well as some sadness. You know, so I’m kind of leaning into that other side, where our 16 year old is a sophomore. And, you know, it is the time is ticking and is ticking fast. And there isn’t like this stockpiling of time spent. Because once you’re that age, you just want to be with your friends, which we totally understand. And we’re happy for you know, her. And she has a great group of great, very large and varied social group. But when you’re your kids are time markers. And when your child becomes of age where you start really contemplating them fleeing the nest. That’s a whole other kind of thing. And I’m still not as fully aware of it as I will be. But I know that it’s there. It weighs on you. So it’s not like there’s ever a time when you’re like I can just sit back and relax, relax and not think about this. It’s a constant thing. This is why I think it’s important to be intentional about how we use our time.
So the people that cannot say no to anything, they are obviously not conscientious and honoring of their time. They’re like okay, I’ll spread myself so thin that I’m totally disregarding like every I don’t know I can’t speak for that. But well, they’re disregarding
self to self. Yeah, I can count to time, yeah, yeah. So I think it’s really important that we, we mark our time, and we log it, and we pay attention to it. And we have routines that, that allow us to make a full usage of it. I imagine time to be like, you know, I don’t know, a wet towel or something that you have to ring and you’re trying to get all the, all the water out of or, or pressing a lime into a cocktail. Okay, that’s a salad dressing, and you’re squeezing, and you want every last drop of that sweet goodness coming out of that fruit. That, to me, is what I want my day to feel like, I want to feel like I am pressing in on time, requiring it, to give me everything that it has exacting it’s best for myself and for my family out of it. And I don’t think I can do that without being intentional about it.
So what are some things that we can do that you believe we can do to start taking more advantage of that time that that moment?
First, I think we have to get up
in the morning. Yep.
Okay. It is, it is really easy not to, there are plenty of people who just simply don’t want to, I totally get that. At the same time, I think we have to get up. My grandfather used to say, you know, don’t sleep in you’re wasting your day, when you’re kid you don’t care, you just want to sleep, your body needs it. At this point, I get that right. And my body, my age, I’m starting to wake up earlier and not just not be able to go back to sleep, like the days of being able to cruise and be in bed at you know, 738 Nine, those are rare. It can happen. But it’s rare. And typically, it’s because I was up later. So I think getting up is number one. Number two, this is the song that I’ve sung for 32 previous episodes and will before I will, again, routines, morning, evening routines, things that you do regularly ordinarily, and systematically. In order to to mark your time, there’s this wonderful text in Proverbs, I guess that talks about how important it is to count your days. And I think it’s important to make your days count. Right. So both sides of that equation, count your days, be mindful of where you are, what time it is. Also, make your days count make your days worthwhile. They have said for older people, or for those who have newly retired, that when you’ll hear them say, I don’t even know what day it is, you know, because you used to live for the weekend. But when every day’s a weekend, you don’t know what day it is. So it’s important to do something slightly remarkable every day. Something that sets today apart from yesterday, something that sets tomorrow apart from today. Get up routine, do something different. Prioritize. Make sure that you have your priorities intact. And make sure you know what you want to do why you want to do it when you want to do it and stick to that. Simplify meaning get rid of the things that aren’t worth your time. And finally, I would say to be systematic to systemize it to, to have that, that idea that just because it’s my time, it’s not someone telling me what I have to do. And when I have to do it, I should do that for myself. You know, we need to be able to parent ourselves, I don’t need someone telling me that I need to take the trash out by 7am on a Friday. That’s my job. So I’m going to make sure that I systemize most of my life so that I know what time I want to do what so that I’m using all of my time as faithfully and wisely as I can. That’s just off the top of my head a few,
I think implementing what you said with something you’re looking forward to. So let’s say you have something that’s coming up next week that people are really excited about and I know goodwill, you who are listening, oh, I can’t wait for that. And you’re just totally wishing all the time up until that away so that you can get to that celebration or that event and then that’s over in four hours and then it’s over. Right My point is is everything that you just said, why don’t we put that into place today up to that event and see how we feel so instead of looking forward to you can look forward to but don’t wish all the time before that event
away. Exactly. Exactly. So
I want to really easy to do I want if we start there and see how we feel the next week when we get to that we probably have appreciated the week, the week and a half before leading up to a lot more.
That’s good. I think it’s really easy for us to to wish away time. You know, I really can’t wait to this weekend. I’m taking this trip with these, you know heard someone say I’m taking a trip with friends this weekend. And I’m thinking that’s probably the thing they’re gonna think most about that week, all week long. And there’s so much time that happens between now and then that we not just preparing for what’s coming but being present. What is
we we start doing it at a young age Anderson’s four years old. He said, Daddy, I can’t wait to be five. Oh, yeah. I can’t wait to be five years old. I can’t wait to be nine years old. As I said one time I that?
Yep. Can’t wait till I can drive. Can’t wait till I can date can’t wait till I get to go to college. Yeah. And we’re always doing it, you know, then it’s, then you’re in the work world war can’t wait till I retire. That’s a big, that’s a big gap. Right? Can’t wait for my kids to retire in 30 years. Yeah, exactly. And you know, we’re not guaranteed anything. That’s why it’s so important just to build in the moments that you want to look forward to now. So I tell people a lot if you if you’re a long time away from your vacation, or if you’re aways away from your retirement, build many vacations, many retirements into your everyday, you know, what are you looking forward to in your retirement? Well, I’m looking forward to having the time to do such and such. Well, how about creating one day a week where you spend two hours doing such and such. So yeah, you might want to travel in retirement, you can’t travel for two hours in one day a week. But you could certainly start making a journal about places that you want to go and start researching those maybe taking a language class about those or, or going online and studying cultural motifs and, and themes for that particular place. That’d be a great way to spend your time, create a digital file using Dropbox or Evernote. We’re not being sponsored by them. But they’re great programs to dump all your websites, your search into one place. So that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you’ll have a ton of research that you did preparing for now. But you weren’t just preparing, you’re enjoying it now. Like, let’s say I want to go out of the country in a year. And I’m starting to prepare for that. Now. I’m reading for that now. That’s exciting. Now, I’m not just thinking oh, I can’t wait to be there. Like I’m enjoying. Reading that being in it. It’s it’s changes my present, not just my future. So I think it’s important that we build mini vacations, little bit of Sabbath, a little bit of retirement in every day. 20 minutes, 30 minutes in the morning, doing anything you want to do 30 minutes in the evening doing something that you really enjoy doing. So you don’t get to do it all day long. But you can have these little snippets of time that really can be beneficial.
I don’t know about you, excuse me who are listening. But this has been quite the nugget for me this this podcast this episode. I really appreciate the insight Dr. Carroll, I think we need to be more mindful every single day, every single moment of these moments because we do not get them back. We will never get them back. You can spend $2 at the store on a pack of gum, you’re gonna get that $2 back if you have a job and you know aren’t have earned that you’ll never get this moment back ever. So for you, ladies and gentlemen, to be listening to this podcast this episode, I hope I know Dr. Carroll does that this is life giving, that this is encouraging to you and for you and that you feel that you have spent your time wisely learning and growing and bettering yourself because that’s why we do this. Right.
Yeah. And I thank you for using your valuable time allowing us to be in your, in your family, in your car in your ears. It means the world to us that you would spend the time that you have with us when you could be doing literally anything else with that time. That is a huge honor to us and we’re very grateful to you.
Well, until next time, be kind to your time and to yourself. I’m Nathan Morris. I’m
Jonathan Carroll and this is you’ll die