Use it up. Use it all up. Don’t save a thing for later. – Use It Up, The Tragically Hip
I dropped these lyrics on my son at a swim meet. We were at a finals session, trying to get him prepared. He was there for two races, the 100m breaststroke & the 50m backstroke. The breaststroke is his favourite and he swam well in the preliminaries, winning his heat by a sizeable margin. He has less enthusiasm for the backstroke.
But it wasn’t to be. A judge determined that in his preliminary race he had taken an extra stroke underwater after his dive and so had been disqualified from the finals for the 100m breaststroke. He would only be swimming the 50m backstroke. And he was in tough, competing against a more seasoned field of swimmers, many of whom favoured that particular stroke.
That left him disappointed and questioning the point of even being there for the finals. We talked about focusing on improving his own time, going after a new personal best, rather than worrying about the other swimmers. Since this would be his only race of the evening he realized there was no reason to hold back. That’s when I shared the song with him. Use it up. Use it all up. Don’t save a thing for later.
I was listening to the song today and thinking about the way it ties into the theme I’ve been leaning into this year, which is using my time well. It’s not just about using or filling all of our time. That’s easy. What’s tougher is using it well. It’s easy to squander the time we have. While there’s nothing new in that realization I’ve been thinking about time more deliberately this year. It’s our scarcest resource and yet we treat it as if it is unlimited. But it’s not. All we ever have is this moment. In the words of the Mother Theresa, Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come.
I’ve been setting aside at least a few minutes each day to remind myself of the importance of using my time well. That daily focus has made me think more deeply about my use of time and I’ve noticed that even the language we use in reference to time reflects the value we place on it. Time slips away. Don’t waste your time. How do you want to spend your time? But we’ve become so accustomed to hearing those words that the weight and meaning has been pulled from them.
And I think that’s part of the reason that for me, music can be so powerful. A song can take an idea and position it in a way that will make you notice it, think about it anew, view it from another angle. Do you “use it up”? Do you “use it all up”? Whether that’s competitive swimming or writing the stories you want to write. Are you putting everything you have into it, right now, in this moment?
Use it up. Use it all up. Don’t save a thing for later.
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