Patrick Mosher argues that time is sacred, not a commodity to rush through. Life expectancy doubled from 36 years in the 1920s to 72 in 2017, yet we squander this gift. He shares his family's stories across two world wars and the Depression to show what previous generations sacrificed to give us this time.
Chapters
I can't wait. When I hear that phrase, my comeback is, and yet you must. We wait to check out at the store, we wait for dinner, we wait for the elevator. I want it now. When we even sing about this impatience, I searched the phrase I want it now in song lyrics. There was a song, I Want It Now. From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from 1971. The lyric appears in Queen's song "I Want It All" from 1989. The lyric appears in East 17's song "I Want It" from 1992. And that lyric appears in the Black Eyed Peas song "The Now Generation" in 2009. We've wanted it now for over 4 decades. Waiting runs afoul with one of my most sacred values: time. When I delivered strategic selling training to sellers all over the world, I usually asked what resource they considered most valuable, and they all concur it's their time. They don't like to travel from location to location. They draft call plans for the most important customer meetings. I call these intentional interaction plans. I spoke to pharmaceutical sales reps who meticulously scripted the 38-second walk from the doctor's car in the parking lot to the front desk of their office. Yes, time is precious. How are you with time? Are you easygoing? Impatient? Counting the minutes to the next stop in your road trip? Settling into a slice of quiet time in your alone time at home? Looking forward to next year's vacation? However you spend your time, please treat every minute with respect. Dive into your hobbies with playfulness. Dive into your work with purpose. Dive into your relationships with passion. Time. I have a concern about our humanity related to time. Let me share a statistic with you. This is actual data, so it's confirmed and real. These are facts. Well, I'm going to show you here on this graph. When my dad was born in the late 1920s, the average life expectancy on the planet was 36 years. That's across the whole globe. 36 years. You can see how flat it was from 1800 to 1926. It was a gain of 5 years. When my dad was born, became an adult, you can see here World War II, the Spanish flu. But then we've jumped in 2017, it's 72 years. We've doubled life expectancy between the time my dad was born and now when I'm an adult. That's amazing. Of course, you know, when we talk about global life expectancy. There's, there's local statistics and geographic normal curves, but the fact is, when my dad was born, a person was expected to live half as long as we are today. Our parents and grandparents and all past generations before them gave us something better than money in inheritance, knickknacks, or even amazing memories. They worked hard and contributed to the advancement of humanity. They gave us the most precious gift of all, more time. They didn't waste time. I'm amazed at my maternal grandfather's life timeline. He migrated from Cardiff, Wales in the early 1900s seeking a better life. When World War I broke out, he went to Canada to enlist to serve his mother country. He fought in the trenches of France, was gassed, survived. Came home to the 1918 Spanish flu when he observed 685,000 people die. That's 6.6 people for every 1,000 people in the United States. Do you know 1,000 people? See their faces in your mind's eye right now and relish each one. Then my grandfather struggled about putting food on the table for his family of 5 as he weathered the Great Depression. For 10 years. Are you enjoying a hot meal today? Taste every delightful morsel. The depression ceased when he saw his son join the Navy and he was sent to the Pacific theater of World War II. My grandfather desperately hoped he would see his son again. Look into the eyes of your loved ones. And feel the warmth as they gaze back at you. When I think of his story, I feel blessed. What I remember most about my maternal grandfather was him picking the song "Oh Susanna" on his banjo as he leaned forward in his red easy chair. He made great sacrifices in his lifetime, and I'm grateful for, for this abundant life. That I get to live. I want to bask in every minute of it. With double the expectancy of our parents, life expectancy of our parents, how are we going to use all that extra time? What's your plan? You see, I'm afraid we're commoditizing our time. When something is so ample, we tend to devalue it. And time is pretty ample these days. So here's some phrases we use to prove we're slipping into time as a commodity. I'll get to it tomorrow. Let's wait out this storm. When we get back to the status quo. Or I can't wait back— can't wait till we get back to normal. Have you ever said any of those? Hmm. Here's my plan to squeeze every bit of life out of every minute of each day. First, gather, store, and share my stories in my Wisdom for Humanity blog posts. So thank you for listening to this and reading this. I support people in their life missions with my Significant Impact Monthly program. I take people to sacred places all over the world on my Wisdom Councils, and I bottle ancient wisdoms in my Wisdom Archetypes framework. What will you give to future generations? What is your legacy? How are you changing the way people work and live in your family and in your community? How are you preserving the gifts you were given by past generations so that future generations bask in the beauty of this grand thing called life? Let's give future generations the time of their life.
