Don’t Worry About Wasting Your Time
You never are.
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There is no such thing as a waste of time.
Everything you are doing now will lead you in some way to what you will do next.
This truth doesn’t mean we should be careless with how we spend our time. If anything, it means we should be careful — not cautious, but careful.
Approaching life with caution indicates fear, an expectation that things are going to go wrong and we must be ready for it.
Approaching life with care, however, indicates love, an understanding that we have profound influence over our futures and a willingness to use it.
When we feel stuck in life, we may worry we are wasting it — our one chance, our single shot at building a life we can be proud of; an everyday reality we don’t have to escape to feel happy.
When we feel stuck in life, we fear time. We resent that it’s passing, moving relentlessly forward and leaving us behind. I think a lot of us battle with that — the fear of being left behind.
Are we where we always thought we would be or somewhere entirely different?
Are we hitting the milestones, the ones that seem to universally matter, before or after everyone else?
Are we someone that people look up to or do we feel looked down on?
When we compare our lives to others, we always lose. When we feel ahead we have to hurry to stay that way. When we feel behind we have to rush to catch up.
You can’t rest when you’re in the middle of a race until you realize the only one you are competing against, if you are competing at all, is the person staring back at you in the mirror. The only one who gets to decide if whatever you are doing is a waste of time or a necessary step on the path to your purpose is you.
Sometimes, you will be called to do nothing. You will be drawn into a season of rest, recuperation, and healing, during which it may seem like nothing is progressing when really you are.
When nothing seems to be changing, you are being changed.
When your life isn’t working out, you are working yourself out.
