One day, you will wake up for the last time.
You probably won’t know it.
You might put the kettle on. Check your phone. Think about everything you need to get done. Get irritated by something small.
There may still be washing in the machine, unanswered emails and plans for the weekend.
Life won’t necessarily give you a moment to prepare. A chance to put things right. A quiet afternoon to sit with the people you love.
We know this. Yet look at how easily we give our days away.
Someone speaks to us badly, and we carry their words around until bedtime.
Something goes wrong at work, and the people at home get whatever patience we have left.
We replay an argument in the shower. Continue it in the car. Take it to dinner. Lie awake having it again.
A moment that lasted thirty seconds gets another twelve hours of our life.
And what did those twelve hours cost?
Perhaps a conversation we barely listened to. A meal we didn’t enjoy. A child asking us to look at something while we stared straight through them.
We were there. But our minds were somewhere else, trying to win an argument that had already ended.
I catch myself doing this too.
We behave as though we have an endless supply of ordinary afternoons. As though we can afford to spend this one angry, distracted or consumed by something we won’t even remember in a year.
But this afternoon counts.
So does the drive home. So does tonight.
These hours are your life. You don’t get them back once you’ve calmed down.
Of course, some things deserve our concern. Grief is real. Illness is real. Financial pressure can be relentless. You cannot breathe your way out of every problem, and feeling anxious or angry doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
But there is a difference between dealing with a problem and allowing it to occupy every room in your mind.
You can have a difficult conversation without rehearsing it fifty times.
You can take responsibility for a mistake without punishing yourself for the rest of the week.
You can disagree with someone and still enjoy your evening.
The next time you feel that familiar surge, pause.
Take a slow breath before you reply. Before you send the message. Before you carry it through the front door.
Then ask yourself:
“Does this deserve as much of my life as I’m about to give it?”
Sometimes, action will be needed. An apology. A boundary. A decision you’ve been avoiding.
Often, you’ll realise you can let it pass.
You don’t need the last word. You don’t need a stranger to understand you. You don’t need to keep reopening a moment simply because you wish it had gone differently.
And you don’t have to wait until every problem is solved to experience some peace.
There will always be another bill, another delay, another person behaving in a way you cannot understand. If peace depends on all of that stopping, you could spend your entire life waiting.
None of us knows how much time we have left.
But we do have some say in how we spend the next hour.
When it’s over, will you have spent it feeding your resentment? Or will you have dealt with what you could, put down what you couldn’t, and paid attention to the life happening around you?
One day, you would give anything for another ordinary afternoon.
You have one today.
Thanks for taking a moment to slow down with me this week.
Simon 🤟
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