Every Day Is A Seat In The Arena

A simple visualization that helps you realize that every day of your life counts.

Have you ever thought about a life span in terms of the total number of days you might live?

What do you think? How many days would it be?

The average life expectancy in the United States is 78.4 years (source: Health System Tracker). For simplicity, let's round that up to 80 years.

Let's take our 80 years (hopefully) and multiply them by the number of days in each year. We'll use 365.25 to account for the leap years.

80 years x 365.25 days/year = 29,220 days

If you live for 80 years, you will live approximately 29,000 days.

I used to work at the Ball Arena (then known as the Pepsi Center) in Denver, Colorado. It is an indoor sports arena that hosts Denver's professional hockey and basketball teams, as well as concerts and other mid to large sized events with its 21,000 seats.

When I first realized how short life really was, I couldn't help but make the correlation between the number of days in an average life and the number of seats in a professional hockey arena. Remember, the average life span is roughly 29,000 days. There were 21,000 seats in that arena. Not that different to where a comparison couldn't be made.

If each seat represented a day in my life, I could see most of my life represented right there in front of me, as the seats in the arena.

Life is finite.

Each day that you have already lived, a seat occupied. Every day that passes by is another seat that has been filled. If you can picture this, you may start to see the urgency in living every day as if it was your last.

If you're following along on this visualization my hopes are to communicate the urgency that each day holds.

They ALL count.

I have a countdown timer in my phone. I don't look at it often, but on this count down timer I have my 80th birthday as one of the dates. As of this writing, I have 11, 568 days left (assuming I'm lucky enough to get there). Everything after that I'll consider bonus time.

Look at that number. The number of days I presumably have left. Take one day off for everyday I'm alive. All of a sudden, you can see, there is urgency, time is limited.

This perspective has reminded me of the urgency in which life demands. I’m not saying that every day has to be a record setter, but you don’t have any to waste.

Every. Single. Day. Counts

How will you fill the seats in your arena? What will you choose to do with the seats that you have yet to fill?

I hope that you live your days in a way that when you think back, when you gaze out to the seats in the arena and see all of the beautiful things that you have been able to experience, it brings a smile to your face and tears to your eyes.  All of the loved ones, all of the exchanged smiles, the good days, and the bad. All of them occupying an important spot in the arena.

How did you fill your seats?