Life’s Deadline

Scratch paper and forgotten drafts — I was searching through my various journals, post-it-notes and scratch pads and noticed the massive amount of deadline dates and to-do-lists that I’ve created, but not necessarily completed. As I turned the pages, an animated inscription etched invisibly across my forehead, outlining my hairline with the word loser.

I began to think, how often do we shuffle around getting caught in the fisherman’s net of life, forgetting about the massive amounts of post-it-notes scrunched inside our pants pockets, the inner zipper of our purses, or taped to our cork boards to subtly remind us of all the things we’ve let fall at the waist side. I’m so ashamed at the amount of notepad pages inscribed with to-do-lists and don’t-forget-lists highlighting dates that have come and gone. In that instant, I realized that I’m guilty of stressing over timelines and project due dates, but never slow down long enough to focus on the days, hours and minutes ticking quickly past my sole purpose…my existence.

We all have come to some type of understanding and acceptance that there is absolute certainty that we’re all going to die one day. But do we ever really consider life as a project that has a deadline? Do we look at life as that one school project that carries the highest percentage, which determines our future–our existence? Probably not.

I never thought about life in that manner, until recently. I’ve suddenly began focusing on the rate of which life speeds past me…sometimes erratically maneuvering through the course with no real destination, hypothesis, measurement or conclusion.  There is no direction (unless you’re the focused student that jots down everything the instructor says or whispers to you when the other students aren’t paying attention) that will lead you to determine the sum of it all and the necessary components before you’re forced to submit.

I often stare at the large number of journals and notebooks sitting on my desk with identical itemized categories of things-to-do. Some of them have been redlined with revised deadlines that I can honestly say I haven’t pulled out a knife and carved onto my “seriously-important-shit-to-do stone…but some have been scratched off without completion. I think if I readjust my point of view on life and the necessary steps to fulfill my purpose, I may avoid the many redline dates and revisions to the biggest project I’ve ever been assigned…living out my destiny.

Life is what you make it…but eventually the deadline to make it count will arrive. I’m trying to be ready, fulfilled and accomplished whenever my date arrives.

The real question is…will You submit on time?