Spending Yourself

I moved a couple of weeks ago. Somewhere among end-of year work projects and holiday shopping came unpacking boxes and setting up house. Some of the boxes hadn’t been opened for a year, when I got rid of my New York apartment and shipped everything to Los Angeles. I pulled a beautiful candle out of one of the boxes that I’d saved until I moved into this new place—a wait that wound up being a year long. And my first thought was, “No more saving.”

I’ve always been a saver. This can be good when you’re talking financials. Yet there are other areas in life where an over-emphasis on saving can be a detriment. Things are meant to be used: food is meant to be eaten, clothes are meant to be worn, candles are meant to be lit. Seriously. I’ve had great food go bad, favorite clothes eaten by moths, high-end candles melt in hot cars and garages and become unusable. This is just a waste.

And as wasteful as this is, nothing is more wasteful, and perhaps sadder, than doing the same thing with your life.

After “No more saving,” my thought process went on to, “I want to use what I have. I want to spend—my things, myself, my life.” The last thing I want to do is to come to the end of my life and find that it was, even a little bit, unspent. 

The poet Mary Oliver asks, 

        “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” 

A very big question. If it’s too big for you at this point, narrow the aperture from your life in general to your time right now. What will you do now? What will your 2011 be?

And keep in mind that the question isn’t “Will you spend yourself?” but “HOW will you spend yourself?” Because there is no doubt—you will spend yourself. You have no choice in that. None of us do.

As I kept unpacking, I remembered a scene from the film Gattaca in which the genetically superior brother asks the main character, played by Ethan Hawke, how in the world he won their swim races as children. The answer: “I never saved anything for the trip back.”

Whether it’s inappropriate saving, or holding back, or avoiding, or not committing to, or whatever, ask yourself:

How will I spend myself this year? What will I dive into with my time, my heart, my life, myself?