How many breaths are there between the first life providing one and then our final exhale? How many minutes between the two. I can remember my mother telling me when I was young that it made her sad when she would read about someone young that had passed away. But I wondered even back then, what if that person had a wonderful fulfilling life … even if it was shorter than what we think is “normal”. Why should that make one sad? I have known so many people that have lived very long lives but did not appreciate that and were callous and unkind. Is it better to live 30 years and always be happy and in awe of the wonder of life or to live 87 years and be bitter and resentful every one of those days?
So it seems to me it is not the total of minutes that make up your life… but yet what you do with those minutes.
I think of all the minutes that I have used in my life to current date and contemplate if I feel they were put to good use. I realize that there are periods of time in my life that the time was foolishly wasted. That I placed a higher value on someone else’s time and personal worth much more than I placed upon my own.
Somehow… my upbringing conditioned me that if I placed someone else’s needs above my own. That it would help make me a better person…or at least a more humbled person. What I experienced was that this just caused me to be “utilized’ by other people and then discarded abruptly when they had exhausted everything they could use.
There are moments in my life that I wish had never ended and I try desperately to hold on to these… and moments that I wished I never had allowed to exist. I want to be able to go back in time and approach these people and say, “ You wasted my valuable minutes and I would like to have those back so I could re-used them on happy memories”
My passion for my life and my artwork expands outward from this and I try to make different (better) choices than I have in the past. This has become an expression of my being and often a way to explain and sometimes reflect upon my past. Holding on to some of the past in hopes of it never escaping. But I know with every ounce of my being that time is fleeting.
I inhale…exhale…and another moment passes.
I go to sleep at night and I lay in bed asking myself what could I have done differently today? It is not because I feel the need to second guess the choices that I made… only to help me make better choices for tomorrow. I only have so many minutes… I do not want to waste them.
1 minute = 12 breaths
60 minutes = 720 breaths
24 hours = 17,280 breaths
1 week = 120,960 breaths
1 month = 3,628,800 breaths
1 year = 43,545,000 breaths
43 years = 1,872,460,800 breaths
and counting….