This Is It

It all starts before we're even born, framed as either "I can't wait for the baby to get here!" or "Get this thing out of me!" And as soon as we're born, the race begins. Our parents can't wait until we sleep through the night, finish our bottles, and get out of swaddles.

Then we learn to crawl, and the countdown begins for us to walk. And when will teeth start coming in? What about our first foods, first words, and first friends? Then potty-training – there's always a silent competition with fellow parents to see who's kid is first out of diapers. Showing the ubiquity of this phenomenon, there's a Bluey episode about it (maybe the GOAT Bluey episode).

Eventually we start preschool and kindergarten, and it's a contest to spell more words, count higher, and sell more popcorn or wrapping paper for the school fundraiser. As we grow up, we're expected to excel at school, sports, and extracurriculars. And to "help" us, we get tutors, private instruction, and pitching coaches when we're 8.

At some point, we get the message. We internalize the drive for "what's next?" We begin to look forward to the next grade, next level in sports, or the next seat in the orchestra.

We can't wait to leave for college. Then we're excited to move out of the dorms, get out of prereqs and into major-specific classes, then graduate and finally get into the real world. In the real world, we can't wait to start our career, where we just want to get done with training and get into the actual job. Then we start pushing for the next promotion (and the next one... and the one after that).

We meet someone, and can't wait for the first date, then the first anniversary. We then look forward to the wedding day so planning can just be over and we can finally enjoy being married. Then we can't wait for kids (when, ironically, we rush them through all the same milestones our parents rushed us through).

While juggling parenting and taking care of our aging parents, we still work for the next promotion, when we think we'll finally have enough money, vacation time, or seniority to relax a bit and sneak out to see our kids' recitals and little league games. Then after years of overworking ourselves at the office, we start longing for retirement, when we'll finally be able to live the life we want. We want to "spend more time with family." The same one we missed out on when they were young. But now, they're out of the house with their own families, lives, and journeys.

We spend our lives looking for what's next. Meanwhile, we've missed the carefree (and responsibility-free) exhilaration of childhood, the awkwardness of high school, and the adult-lite version of life that is college.

The punch-drunk fog of early relationship love passed us by. So too did the innocent, exhausting, messy joy of infants and toddlers and the miracle of getting a front row seat to our kids finding themselves. We were too busy striving to embrace early-career freedom, where the most important question was who's buying the next round. We didn't know enough about what we'd lose to enjoy the loose 20-something friendships we no longer have time for.

The great news? Our life right now, today, is one we'll someday yearn for. These are the future's Good Old Days.

And this is it. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed, and we have no way of knowing how or when life will change to make us miss today. We don't know when we'll look at today, this actual day, with rueful sadness. We just know that we'll be lucky to live to that point.

So embrace today. Live today. Stop waiting to hit the next goal to feel like you're allowed to live. Plan the vacation, go to the recital or little league game, play hooky with your kid and go to a movie, watch an hour of TV with your spouse instead of reading the latest productivity book. Call your mom. Live today. If we're lucky, tomorrow will get here all on its own.

It's not about carpe diem or quitting your job to become a skydiving instructor. It's more about embracing life for what it is, realizing that you'll someday wish you could go back to today. One of my favorite quotes is from GE's legendary, if imperfect, CEO Jack Welch: "Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be." For our purposes, I'd paraphrase it to say, "Embrace life, love life, as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be."

Emily Dickinson said, "Forever is made up of nows." Rather than wait for forever, let's embrace our now.