Moment Maps and Measuring What Remains
For reasons that were not apparent to me, but were to my wife, I have been thinking a lot about the future, and specifically my future, and how I want to spend it.
What started last Spring with my brother's passing was further fueled by reasons to reflect, and a book I read and wrote about in May: Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. In the past couple of months, I have given the book to 10 different people, all of whom said it was life-changing. It's worth checking out.
Even after thinking a lot about the last chapters of my life, I wasn't prepared for a blog post I came across by Tim Urban's called The Tail End, published on his website Wait But Why. Tim thinks like no other human being I know.
Like Perkins, Urban suggests we stop measuring life in years and start measuring it in experiences. At first, it sounds like a clever thought exercise or math problem.
Then it becomes something much more profound.
Instead of saying he has fifty or sixty years left, he begins counting what those years actually contain. Not could contain, but actually WILL contain.
For instance...
If he reads five books each year, he thinks about having maybe three hundred books left to enjoy. He imagines fifty or sixty Super Bowls remaining. The same goes for presidential elections, Olympic Games, autumns, family vacations, or walks on the beach. Life suddenly isn't an endless stretch of time—it becomes a finite collection of moments.
Then he arrives at the thought that stops you cold.
He realizes that because he only sees his parents a handful of times each year, he has probably already spent nearly 90 percent of the time he will ever spend with them.Not ninety percent of their lives—ninety percent of his moments with them.
Think about that. Maybe there are only thirty more dinners around the table. Twenty more Christmas mornings. A dozen family vacations. A few more birthdays. A handful of ordinary afternoons that don't seem important until one day you realize they were.
Urban's point isn't that life is short, but that what matters is what you do with your remaining experiences.
As I finished reading his essay, my mind immediately wandered to us as music teachers.
A student who begins kindergarten and graduates from high school will spend roughly 2,340 days in school. That sounds like forever. Ask any sixth grader, and graduation feels as far away as retirement.
But students don't get music for all 2,340 days. And you only see them for a portion of their time in music.
Because of elementary schedules, alternating classes, testing, assemblies, holidays, summers, and the realities of school life, the average student spends a portion of about 1,110 of those days learning music (I actually roughed out the math on this one).
And that's assuming they don't quit.
Start counting experiences in those 1,100 musical days, and the number becomes MUCH smaller. In those 1,100 plus days, they will likely experience around twenty-eight concerts, and sixteen home football games under Friday night lights. If they keep going, they will attend thirty plus marching invitationals. A few district concert festivals, and maybe four state festivals, if everything goes well and they make the top group their first year. Otherwise the number is even smaller.
Want to see the number shrink again? Of the dwindling numbers above, how many remain? For instance, my youngest son (who is a junior in high school) has the following remaining:
12 Marching contests
9 Home football games
6 Band concerts
4 More trips
3 Camps
2 State championships
1 Senior concert
One final show. One last bus ride home. One last hug before graduation.
Read those numbers again, but now think of them for yourself, as a music educator,
How many times will you teach someone to make their first sounds?
How many football games do you have?
How many marching band contests lie ahead?
How many holiday concerts and times will you conduct Sleigh Ride?
How many festivals?
How many more times will you play Pomp and Circumstance?
Suddenly every rehearsal looks different. And every student seems more meaningful.
The rehearsal that gets shortened because of an assembly isn't "just one rehearsal." It's one of only 1,140 opportunities. But every performance is just one of thirty.
Every moment becomes a little more precious when you measure the experiences and not the days.
It got me thinking. What if we measured our careers the same way? How many years do you have left?
Look at your career not in years. Not by contracts. Not by retirement dates. But by experiences. And not just the experiences you have had, but how many you have left.
The football game you complain about attending? One of perhaps sixteen left in your life. The spring concert you've conducted dozens of times? Maybe you only have seven or eight left.
How many first days of school do you have left? Twenty? Fifteen? Ten?
One August morning you'll unlock the band room for the very last time. How many more beginning band classes will you teach? How many more times will you hand a nervous eleven-year-old their first instrument and watch them make that glorious, squeaky, unforgettable first sound?
How many more times will you conduct Holst's First Suite in E-flat? Or Second Suite in F? Or Lincolnshire Posy? Or Ride of the Valkyries?
Or that piece you've loved since your very first year of teaching?
At some point there will be one final performance.
One final downbeat.
One final fermata.
One final release.
How many more seniors will walk across the stage, hug you, and whisper, "Thank you for being there?"
When you begin counting moments instead of years, your career suddenly feels very different.
Perhaps that's what Tim Urban was really trying to teach all of us. Life isn't measured by the years we accumulate. It's measured by the meaningful experiences we create for our students and ourselves.
Have a great week,
Scott
p.s. I created a way for you to build your own "Moments Map." Click below to build it. Be sure to download, print, and post somewhere you see every day.
p.p.s. Really - click it. It won't take more them 90 seconds.