Walk into any gym in January and you’ll see (or be someone) spending time on a piece of cardio equipment, watching the seconds click off and the miles click up and maybe the calories click down. You’re on a fast track to hating exercise, your body, your food and your life. The idea of watching time pass while doing ANYTHING that’s already difficult is a terrible waste. And just like everyone else who vows to lose weight, start exercising/dieting or being nicer (or whatever resolution is), we stop, because counting time is no way to live.

I was having one of those Low Days recently, feeling sorry for myself, disappointed in my behaviors and results, low on energy, unmotivated to exercise, not interested in anything but not able to settle down. You know those days? They aren’t pleasant, and in some seasons of our lives, they seem to come more frequently or with more intensity, making them harder to shake. 

One of my familiar patterns of discontent is to criticize my body, no matter what condition I have been in and regardless of what’s really bothering me. When I was at my fittest, I still had days of dissatisfaction about this or that. Now, I think back and wonder how I had been so skewed in my understanding. Why hadn’t I been more thankful for how my body worked, or even looked, sometimes? Why wasn’t I able to appreciate my life more? I don’t recall moments of deep satisfaction because of the pant size I was wearing or the weight on the scale. Do you?

The regretful thing about our inattentive self-centeredness is that we don’t actually see what we’re seeing. We don’t realize that what we’re experiencing is what we’ve actually been working toward, because it’s not perfect or exactly like we imagined. Our perception in the moment is different than when we envisioned. And such is the struggle of life. Instead, we can feel satisfied even when we aren’t there yet, appreciating all the greatness in spite of the out of sync rhythms we live through, and know that our days are numbered.

One of the most suffocating feelings is the idea that we are all we have, that we have to make things happen on our own and if we fail, we will fail forever, nothing will ever improve. We may spend days or years wondering what to do with ourselves, if we should take a job, quit a job, start to care for our health (most definitely), invest in other people, save money, begin again, etc, but never make the move. It can be difficult time to see ourselves through. 

I’m grateful to have several people and books in my life that I count on for guidance. One of my go-to books is the Bible, specifically Psalms/Proverbs. Many verses stand alone and talk about life’s difficulties, how to proceed when lost, and where to find help. There’s no doubt that at some point in your life, you have felt the need for more than what you have alone. 

Psalms 90:12 caught my attention after my previously explained Low Day. In this verse, Moses was praying to God for and about the Israelites as they wandered around aimlessly trying to figure out where and how to live. It is a universal human problem that we neglect our time, paying attention to things that don’t matter and realize that our time on earth is really quite short, right before we’re finished.

Ps. 90:12 So teach us to number our days that we may get us a heart of wisdom.

When we number our days, we make our days count for something. We become aware of how to spend our time. We invest in other people and projects. And by doing those things on a daily basis, we get what we want: a heart of wisdom. We have knowledge for every situation, peace about our decisions and direction for our lives. We get what we’re after when we are paying attention, “counting our days”, and not our bank accounts or calories eaten and exercised off because we now know that those things don’t make our days matter. We count our time with others instead of our weight on the scale or size of our clothing. We invest in projects that not only help us but help others. This is how we stay out of Low Days and make our time count.

The idea of being present, attentive, mindful and aware is quite popular now. You’ll find whole workshops on how to pay attention more. Entirely new industries and schools exist for the sole purpose of helping us be more attentive to our work, our families… our time. This is also a common practice in yoga; the attention on the moment and our breath so that we are conscious of what’s happening in our bodies. It’s a difficult one to feel competent at without a lot of practice. And that is really the rub. We have to practice time awareness, just like every other habit and skill that make us better.

And finally, like Moses, being aware of how short life is, really only 70-80 years if we live well, we create a life worth living with a heart of wisdom. Once we’re aware of the brevity of our days, we are considerably more willing to make choices about time. We value exercise and good food because it’s more than just trying to fit into a size or weight. Exercise is a means of living fully and energetically. Eating becomes a shared experience that is life giving, not sleep inducing and size increasing or emotion numbing. We create countless experiences because we now know how to make our time count.