A simple way to make sure that your days are not wasted

Have you noticed that the time gets warped? The longer you live, the faster it runs. Almost everyone reports this perception. When we were eleven years old, why did a year last 10x longer than it seems now? Why do you take a week of holidays from work, you look at all the time you will have for yourself, and end up feeling as if you had only one day off, and do not even remember what you were doing on each day of that week?

There is a good chance that you know the lyrics of "Time" by Pink Floyd. This is a perfect description of what I am writing about. I originally wanted to quote just a verse or two, but actually the whole lyrics of that song make most sense.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

A few days ago I read an interview with a prisoner serving a long term. The interview was about reading and studying while staying in jail, and that inmate said (I do not remember the exact words) that unless you go to bed in the evening even a little wiser and knowledgeable than when you woke up in the morning, your day had been wasted.

I was quite moved with that statement that I find very true and appropriate. I can add to that - not only 'wiser or more knowledgeable', but also more resourceful, more helpful, more creative, just a better person compared to the one you were in the morning. This is the best method to handle the feeling of your life running away.

There is a similar statement: To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed, by Sidney Poitier, an American actor. But I personally think that one gets better during the day, and not necessarily during sleep .... it is what we do when we are awake that matters?

Now, get up and do something. Something that makes you better. Learn, write, fix, help, explain, entertain someone. Whatever suits you, and whatever is best for you. As long as you go to sleep a better person than you are now.