Is this all we’re meant to do?

My purpose isn’t to exhaust time doing busy work.

Photo: Unsplash

Is this it? Am I meant to spend my life in a loop of work, routine, and filling time with to-do’s that rarely fulfills. Surely there’s more to life than treating my life like a checklist. Somewhere along the way, we lost ourselves in doing. No one ever dies wishing they’d worked more or harder is the simplest truth.

At the end of our lives, we rarely think about deadlines, or to-do lists.

We think about the experiences that made us feel alive. We know life is short, but we spend so much time doing the same things we regret later in life. We are pushing ourselves to the edge of exhaustion. We treat time as something to conquer rather than a space to exist within. We are always in our minds, thinking of the next thing to do.

Maybe it’s easier to stay busy, to convince ourselves that work is what matters more. But in the end, no one remembers how many hours we logged. No one ever dies wishing they’d worked more or harder. We are remembered for our love, kindness, and presence. Psychologists have found that, on their deathbeds, people reflect on relationships, not work. They wish for more time with family and friends. They wish they’d let themselves be happier, more present.