To Squander or to Save

Recently at work I have been going through a lot (hours and hours worth) of paperwork, checking and confirming monotonous details that only require a few brain cells.

To ward off the monotony, I have been listening to a lot of Ted Talks. If you’ve never listed to any, you should without doubt check them out!

I found myself naturally gravitating towards Ted Talks that focused on minimizing the “stuff” that you have in your house, home, and life in general. Maybe that’s because I’m leaving for Hawaii soon and theoretically am going to try to fit everything I’ll need in the next six months into one backpack and one suitcase, but lately I have been thinking of how life would potentially be different if the only stuff I cared about having was the stuff that I actually needed. How much less bogged down would my life become?

Then it struck me.

I am free.

I am free to dream and create plans based on those dreams for a bright future, or I am free to choose to go through whatever door is most conveniently opened to me, wasting my free time watching TV and surfing the internet searching for more things that I don’t need.

I am free to squeeze every drop of potential out the life given to me, or I am free to squander it like it’s nothing.

Sometimes life can look so much like a script we all of the sudden realize that we were forced into reading—first is the scene where we go to school, then comes the scene where we go to college, then comes a job, a mortgage, a marriage, a child.

None of those things are bad. In fact, some of those are things that I dream about… someday owning my own house, getting married, becoming a mother—those are dreams that are close to my heart, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, those are dreams that I’m proud of.

But in the here and now I am not married. I do not own a house. I do not have kids. And right now I feel inspired to take advantage of these days of freedom while they last, because I know that when my future dreams of marriage and motherhood come true, I will look back on my days of complete and total independence and freedom with longing.

I don’t want to waste my days, and at the same time I don’t want to be kept in a prison of my own plans.

As I think about intentional living, I am so glad that I’ve chosen to do a YWAM DTS. It was hard to decide to deviate from the route that I thought I would be travelling my life by after I graduated college, but I think it’s such a good choice for me. It may even have been the first catalyst for all the thoughts I’ve been having about how I really want to spend my 20’s. It has reminded me of the sense of responsibility I have for my own life.

My life was a gift to me. I am my soul’s steward, and I am one hundred percent responsible for my life and my time. If someday I look back on my 20’s and am disappointed in the way that I allowed these days to slip through my fingers, it will be on me. My responsibility. My waste. My regret.

And I choose not to allow myself to do that.

Now I’m just left with the questions that follow that choice: What now? What do I want? What do I do once I figure out what I want? How am I going to think this through, and how am I going to put my plans into action?

My answer now is that I don’t know. But I will think it though, write about it, formulate a plan, and then put that plan into action.

This is a vulnerable post for me. I don’t usually just scribble out what’s in my head and throw it onto my blog, but this time I am. Maybe as a way to hold myself accountable to the way I choose to spend my days.

Rest assured that there will be more to come on this. I hope to have many conversations about how to live intentionally, and to think long and hard about what I want.

The definition of squander is to waste something (especially money or time) in a reckless and foolish manner or to allow (an opportunity) to pass or be lost.

And I choose not to let that happen.