Five-hundred, twenty-five-thousand, six-hundred minutes
On the day that would have been Breeana Robinson’s 33rd birthday, I thought it appropriate to release this blog in the hope that it prevents others from losing perspective on how precious life really is.
Far too often we think about the way someone died. I personally think it is more important to think about the way they lived. If you Google a celebrity who has died, quite often below, the most common search results are a series of F.A.Q’s and usually the top one is “How did … die?”.
People are more interested in how someone died than how they lived their life. How they died is only but a moment in the grand scheme of things. How they lived, on the other hand, encompasses millions of moments.
In 2003, my contract took me to Tahiti for six months onboard the Tahitian Princess. During rehearsals for the five shows, one set of song lyrics stood out. That song was “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent.
The opening line of the song goes, “Five-hundred, twenty-five-thousand, six-hundred minutes”. At the time, the significance of those lyrics didn’t sink in as I had not seen the musical, nor did I know what they represented.
Many years later it clicked for me though. Five-hundred, twenty-five-thousand, six-hundred minutes is the number of minutes each of us has in a non-leap year. You often hear people say that the years went by so fast. That is usually the case because we are either hurrying to get somewhere in our lives, or we’re consumed by guilt or regret from things in the past.
It’s been said many times in recent years that we must live in the moment and Eckhart Tolle even aimed his best-selling book “The Power of Now” at this precise topic. In a far less serious way, Ferris Bueller captured a similar sentiment in the movie’s opening monologue when he said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while; you might miss it.”
We are given a relatively small amount of time on earth, yet we spend a large portion of it living in the past or dreaming of the future. I love reminiscing about the past, and like many, I have audacious dreams of my future, but these days I stop and centre myself throughout the day so that I can be present and in the moment. That is often where life’s greatest joys are. We don’t know how long we have on this earth, so why waste a moment of it?
Take a moment to study the figures below.
11,122,560 mins = 185,376 hours = 7,724 days = 1,103 weeks = 253 months = ?? years
Do you know what the answer is, or the significance of these numbers? Before I tell you, let me ask you this. How often have you wasted several minutes procrastinating, an hour fighting with someone, a day hungover where you couldn’t function, or a week worrying about something? How many months have you lost in a bad relationship, or years in a dead-end job?
I don’t want you to beat yourself up over your answer. That defeats the purpose of this exercise. I simply want you to realise that life is precious and that we should never waste a single moment on things that are not worth it. Perhaps if I show you another set of numbers you might get where this is headed. I am certain Breeana’s family will.
06/12/91 – 29/01/13
For those who don’t know, this is Breeana’s date of birth and date of death. It doesn’t mean much when written that way, but look back at the original set of numbers and you get a far more significant look at how valuable life is.
Breeana lived for twenty-one years and just under two months in total. Seems like a fairly short amount of time, right? Now look back at how few days, hours, and minutes she spent on earth. Given that I am not certain of Breeana’s exact time of birth, I have rounded the minutes and hours to a whole day. I’ve also taken into account the leap years over that period. Either way, looking at the hours, days, or weeks she spent here is frightening, when we look at how we spend our time.
Even though Breeana crammed quite a bit into her short life, it’s still horrific to think that life can disappear so quickly. This, along with Breeana’s ever-bubbly personality, it’s no wonder her family, friends, and myself struggled to come to terms with the fact that she ended her life so prematurely.
If there is a lesson to be taken from this, it is that we really must cherish every moment in life. The “dash” between her dates of birth and death looks so small, but somehow her entire life is right there in that dash. Think about life in that context and make sure that your “dash” is filled with many incredible moments.
