How we count our lives

How we count up and measure our life evolves over time.

As babies, it’s something like: how many hours has it been since our last feed, diaper change, snuggle, or nap? If that number stays low, we are content. If not, we cry.

In our young childhood, it’s: how many, and how cool, are our Christmas presents? Because when you’re a kid, that feels like a proxy for everything—love, stability, fun, and standing with others.

Then, it’s all about “likes” and counting those up: how many friends we have in real life, how many “friends” we have on a social network, SAT score, GPA, how many girls/boys who “like us like us.”

Then early adulthood carries the same obsession with visibility and validation—but with higher stakes: salaries, our résumé, hearts on our latest Instagram post, how many copies of our self-published book we sell, our dating prospects, how many beers we can chug in a night, how many “amazing experiences” we can have.

The next step in the evolution of how we count our lives is the hardest because it’s the most nuanced.

On the one hand, the next evolution, if we’re lucky enough to notice it, is about moments of quiet joy, peace, and sacrifice. Like: how many times a week does my heart feel warm? How many times does something happen where I laugh or cry? How many times can I find peace in the quiet of everyday joys like a dish of toast and beans or a walk outside? How many people have I quietly supported and helped to grow? How many people do I get to see that I hug? How consistent am I in really being myself and having intimacy and depth with someone else—or with God?

And what’s hard about this particular evolution is that it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking we’re there. There’s a lot we can do that seems like quiet peace and joy that’s just narcissism or indulgence with a veneer of grace.

Things that we want and probably need, but can quickly become extravagant, like: date nights, vacations, boys’ weekends, weekends where the grandparents take the kids so we can “get some stuff done.” Perhaps the achievements of our children, or the kids’ birthday parties we go to—or all the weekend excursions to give our kids the “perfect” childhood.

We can count those things up and feel like that’s an evolution into quiet joy and peace, but it’s not. Or we think that to create peace, we need to put our feet up on the beach and take a selfie of us with a mojito. That could be a quiet and peaceful and intimate moment—but we don’t need the mojito for it. These moments look like joy, but they’re just a middle-aged version of indulgence, social currency, or productivity.

I am very guilty of confounding vanity for intimacy, as I think many are. I still struggle so much with thinking that I just have to put in all this work and make all this money, so we can have that life of joy, peace, and intimacy that Robyn and I dream about—a life rooted in closeness to family, learning through travel, high-quality time, and serving others.

“Kids and these dreams are expensive,” I say to myself in my head and over conversations at cocktail parties.

Kids certainly aren’t cheap, but perhaps they’re not expensive either—I just believe they are. Life isn’t cheap, but it isn’t expensive—I just believe that.

My kids do want to do fun things, like go on vacations or have cool shirts with their favorite characters on them. And our sons eat a lot (a LOT—and they’re not even teenagers yet). But they also often just want hugs, to be listened to, to learn and be taught, to be outside, to have someone read them bedtime stories.

A life with family and children isn’t cheap, but these things that really matter to them aren’t as expensive as I think. It’s easy to fool myself into believing the indulgences of middle age are the same as moments of quiet and joy—but they aren’t.

Getting this evolution of how I count my life right has been the trickiest because it’s so easy to fool myself into believing my heart has actually opened and I’ve actually evolved.

I was with our 90+ year-old grandmother yesterday, and she said so many times—so many times—over the course of the evening how lucky she was. I get the sense that she feels nearer to the end of her life than she ever has, despite her remarkable health. She’s almost 96, and still lives independently and has her wits about her, which I suppose would make anyone feel like every day is a bonus at the end of a good, long life.

And perhaps that’s the last evolution in how we count our lives—one only the wisest of us reach.

After we learn to appreciate quiet peace and joy and intimacy, we must learn to truly value that we are here. Just that we are here—no more, no less. And to really believe, with our whole being, that every day is a gift.

At the end of our lives, when we’re taking stock of it all, maybe the final wisdom is just this: waking up and saying, “I must be one of the luckiest people alive.”