Do You Feel Like Time Is Slipping Away?
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Do you feel like time is slipping away? It seems like the bucket list gets shorter as the years go by. There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over a person somewhere in their fifties or sixties. The kids are grown. The mortgage is nearly paid off. And somewhere in a drawer, or maybe just in the back of the mind, there is a list. A bucket list. A collection of dreams that were written down in a moment of inspiration and then gently, almost imperceptibly, set aside.
For many of us, that list has gotten shorter over the years. Not because we checked things off. But because time passed anyway. This isn’t a post meant to make you feel guilty. It’s meant to make you feel awake.
We Told Ourselves There Was Always More Time
The most common regret people carry into their later years isn’t something dramatic. It’s not a betrayal or a catastrophe. It’s simply the belief that there would always be more time. More time after the project at work, more time after the kids finished school. Maybe once the debt was paid down. More time when things slowed down a little.
But time doesn’t slow down. It does what it’s always done. And somewhere between the years of working hard and meaning well, a lot of living got quietly postponed.
My Oxygen Story
One day, I was rushed by ambulance to a hospital on 4-12-2024 and have been on oxygen 24/7 from then on and always will be. You may think I can still travel, but it’s not that easy. I tried it for a “Family Reunion.” I dragged my portable oxygen concentrator and another oxygen concentrator in a suitcase. Yes, Mark helped, but it’s not fun. Plus, we had two suitcases. I realized if I lived in California (sea level), I wouldn’t need oxygen. Well, house prices wouldn’t fit our budget there, so after the vacation, we came back to Utah, oxygen in tow. My dream of seeing Niagara Falls is no longer an option. Please, my friends, do what you can now while you have the strength, health, and finances to do so. Just do it.
My Bestie’s Story
She and I have been great friends for well over 15 years. Well, within a month of my oxygen fiasco, my friend ended up on Kidney Dialysis. Not fun. She’s on the kidney transplant list at two hospitals; she kept telling me, “Linda, I don’t know if I can do this.” I learned so much about kidney disease and what she went through to be prepped for Dialysis. I had no idea what it was like to go through the chills, the coldness, and the pain. Now we talk about how we used to go out to lunch and laugh so hard in Southern Utah, and now we both rarely leave our homes in different states. This is the reason I wrote this post today, my sweet friends. Do what you want to do now. Don’t wait.
Did We Work Too Much?
Work is honorable. Providing for a family is one of the most loving things a person can do. But there is a version of hard work that tips into something else, a kind of sacrifice so total that the person doing the sacrificing disappears into it.
Many people look back and realize they were physically present in their homes but mentally somewhere else, thinking about deadlines, budgets, and performance reviews. The family dinner was eaten, but the conversation was distracted. The vacation was taken, but the phone was always nearby.
It’s worth asking honestly: Did work fill the space where life was supposed to go? And if so, was that truly the trade we wanted to make?
Did We Give Too Much to Our Kids?
Parents who sacrifice for their children are doing something beautiful. But sometimes that sacrifice goes so far that the parents forget to live their own lives, and ironically, they may not be doing their children any favors either.
Children who watch their parents deny themselves joy, travel, and adventure to leave a larger inheritance often grow up with a complicated relationship with money and guilt. They may feel burdened by the sacrifice without having asked for it.
What if, instead of leaving behind more money, we left behind more stories? More proof that life, fully and joyfully lived, is available to ordinary people who simply choose to reach for it?
A child who watches a parent book that trip to Portugal, take that painting class, or finally learn to sail learns something no inheritance can teach. They learn that their own dreams are worth chasing, too.
Did We Take Our Health for Granted?
This one is tender to talk about, but it matters. Many of us moved through our younger years with a quiet assumption that our bodies would simply continue to cooperate. We skipped the checkups, and we let the weight creep up. Maybe we said we would start exercising next month, next year, or after the holidays.
Health is not guaranteed. And one of the most painful discoveries a person can make is that the window for certain adventures closed not because of money or time, but because the body is no longer able to do what the heart still wants to do.
This is not meant as a warning dipped in fear. It’s an invitation. Whatever your age and whatever your current health, the best time to begin caring for yourself is right now. Every good choice made today is a gift to your future self.
Do We Live Around Happy People?
Research on human longevity and happiness consistently points to one of the most underappreciated factors in a good life: the people around us.
We are deeply, biologically social creatures. The moods, habits, attitudes, and outlooks of the people we spend time with seep into us whether we notice it or not. Spending years surrounded by chronic complainers, pessimists, or people who are stuck does something to a person. And spending time with curious, joyful, generous people does something very different.
It’s worth looking around at the social landscape of your daily life. Are the people in your inner circle lifting you up or quietly pulling you down? Are your conversations mostly about problems, grievances, and the past? Or do they sometimes venture into wonder, possibility, and what is still ahead?
Community matters enormously. If yours needs refreshing, that isn’t a failure. It’s simply an opportunity.
Did We Skip Travel to Leave More Behind?
For many families, especially those shaped by the experience of scarcity, there is a powerful pull toward saving, accumulating, and leaving something behind for the next generation. That instinct comes from love.
But travel isn’t an indulgence. It’s an education. It stretches the mind in ways that no book, documentary, or conversation can fully replicate. Maybe it teaches humility, curiosity, adaptability, and gratitude. It shows us that there are a thousand different ways to be human, and most of them are fascinating.
The parents who travel, who experience other cultures, who sit at tables in foreign cities and try to order food in a language they barely speak, come home changed. They have more to offer the people they love. They have more stories, more perspective, more life. And the money spent on those experiences? It wasn’t wasted. It was invested in becoming a fuller, richer, more interesting person.
What Would We Do Differently?
This is the real question, and it deserves a real answer. Most people, when asked this with enough honesty and enough quiet, say some version of the same things. They would have worried less. Not about important things, but about the small everyday anxieties that consumed so much mental energy and came to nothing in the end. They would have said yes more often. Invitations. Adventures. To experiences that felt a little outside the comfort zone.
They would have taken better care of themselves earlier, not out of vanity, but out of a recognition that the body is the vehicle for everything else. They would’ve had more honest conversations with the people they love, said the hard things sooner, and expressed appreciation more freely.
We would have spent more time outside, more time in nature, more time doing things that had no practical outcome but filled the soul. And many, though not all, would have traveled more. They would have seen more of the world and trusted that the money would work itself out, because it usually does.
It’s Not Too Late
Here’s the thing about time slipping away: it only slips away in one direction. What’s behind us is behind us. But what is ahead is still unwritten, and it belongs entirely to the choices being made right now.
The bucket list doesn’t have to keep getting shorter. It can grow again. It can be rewritten with the wisdom that only comes from having lived long enough to know what actually matters.
Whatever age you are reading this, whether you’re forty-five or sixty-five or seventy-five, there are still mornings ahead that belong to you. Still places you haven’t been. Still, conversations you haven’t had. Do you have versions of yourself you haven’t yet become? The question isn’t whether time is slipping away. Of course it is. Time always slips away. The question is what you’re going to do with what remains.
Start Small, Start Today
You don’t have to book a flight anywhere or make any dramatic announcements. You just have to begin. Call the friend you’ve been meaning to call. Look up and register for the class you keep thinking about. Say yes to the thing you’ve been quietly wanting to do. The bucket list isn’t a document of regret. At its best, it’s a compass. It points toward the life that is still possible, the one that’s waiting patiently for you to remember it’s there. Time is slipping away, but some of it is still yours. Use it.
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Final Word
If I could do anything differently, I would have spent less time preparing for life and more time actually living it. We are remarkable creatures when it comes to planning. We plan for retirement, plan for emergencies, plan for the kids, plan for the house, plan for next year, and the year after that. And somewhere in all that careful, responsible planning, the present moment often slips by largely unnoticed.
I would’ve sat longer at the dinner table. Not to finish the meal but to finish the conversation. I would have said I love you more, and I would have meant it in the small everyday ways, not just the grand gestures. A cup of coffee was brought without being asked. A hand held during a forgettable Tuesday. I would have worried less about what other people thought of my choices, because the honest truth is that most people are far too occupied with their own lives to spend much time judging yours.
Almost every time, I would have taken the trip. I would have quit the things that were draining me sooner and invested that energy in the things that were filling me up. I would’ve called my parents more before the calls became impossible to make.
And perhaps most of all, I would have understood earlier that a life well lived isn’t measured in what you accumulate or what you leave behind. It’s measured in the depth of the moments you were actually present for. The good news is that most of us still have some runway left. The question isn’t what we would have done differently. The question is: what are we willing to do differently starting right now? That’s the only answer that still matters. May God bless this world, Linda
Copyright Images: Clocks on Wall AdobeStock_497397083 By New Africa, Pink Clock Sleep Hygiene AdobeStock_327813929 By Victor Moussa
