Here at Time Timer, our tagline is “Make Every Moment Count” – and we take that to heart. For the month of November, we are celebrating those moments that we spend with our beloved family and friends and how those family and friends are what really make the individual moments count the most.
We asked our intern, Calvin, to write something about his friends and family for our blog, to help us celebrate our Friends & Family month. He came back with a personal story that truly illustrates our “Make Every Moment Count” motto. His story not only encompasses the true meaning behind our tagline, but he also acknowledges the value that we can gain from our aging friends and family.
Life is Here
By Calvin Batista-Malat
My Grandfather died shortly after I turned fifteen. It was the first time I had lost someone I really knew, and I was left with an entire life, his life, to consider through mourning. I had considered my life until then a prologue. I was a young person, still learning about myself and the world, so I wasn’t really living life, I was going through some training program. The meat of my life had yet to begin. Or so I thought.
I considered my Grandfather’s life. He had spent the last years of his life, half conscious in a stale hospital room, cycling through ill-fated procedures and therapies. I thought that surely can’t be life. I thought my Grandfather wasn’t really living in the same way I wasn’t really living. I was in my prologue, and he, in his epilogue. Capital ‘L’ Life was elsewhere.
But where was this elusive Life to be found? I considered every stage in life, and at every turn I figured that Life was elsewhere. It couldn’t be in your twenties. The twenty-year-olds I knew were still finding their way, lost and confused. Life couldn’t be in your fifties, the fifty year olds I knew seemed to be done exploring the world, content to a routine. Where was this Life I imagined us all having? The part of life that is meaningful, confident, pleasurable? A life comprised of meaningful moments and decisions? I couldn’t pinpoint where that happened.
The answer hit me in all of its exquisite melancholy. There was no chapter of life more significant than all of the others. There was no performance I was training for. Life was in the everyday. Life was in the routine. Life was Mondays. Life was in the mundane interactions. A life is not defined by its highs and lows, but rather, how we carry ourselves through the routines we craft. If I was waiting for an opportunity to live, this was it. If I wanted to make memories, if I wanted to live Life, today was as good of a chance as I would ever have.
It has been three years since my Grandfather died, and looking back, I feel confident in saying that what I remember about him isn’t his accomplishments or the big decisions he made, but rather how he would carry himself in the little moments. The sound of him lumbering down the carpeted steps to his donut, grapefruit, and assortment of vitamins. The nicknames he gave his grandchildren. How close he would sit to the TV in the evenings.
We are remembered, and defined, by how we treat the mundane. That’s why it’s important to keep track of these moments, moments so small, so individually insignificant, yet so very dear.
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For the month of November, please enjoy and share our Friends & Family discount of 30% off anything at timetimer.com (Use code FRIENDS at checkout. Expires November 30, 2019). Shop Now.