Living on Borrowed Time

This piece might take you a couple of minutes. If you can focus that long, it's worth the read.

Grass.

That is the first thing that came to me through the darkness. The sweet soft fragrance filling the only sense that seemed to be working at the moment.

For a brief moment, I sank into it and enjoyed it. That was easy since that is all there was.

Then my body slowly started to come back online, which in turn slowly moved my consciousness out of park.

It was like waking up quickly from a deep sleep in a hotel which leaves you a bit disoriented. I didn’t want that. I just wanted to stay in the dark and enjoy the grass.

But this world noticed my absence. It grabbed me by the foot and drug me back.

Coming to, I may as well have been in that hotel room. I was disoriented and didn’t clearly recognize anything I saw. I knew it was familiar, a place I had seen hundreds of times before but I couldn’t place any of it.

Then everything settled back into place. It was intensely quiet. The only sound, nearby bluejay making an isolated cry. I was alone. It had been a hit and run and I was alone. “Best try to get up”, I thought.

As soon as I moved, that exercise came to an abrupt halt. Instantly, I knew something was seriously wrong. This wasn’t just and ‘ow that hurts’ wrong, this is a ‘oh fuck’ wrong. In trying to climb to my feet, I felt can best be described as a bag full of dominoes in which the dominoes moving around inside the bag across and around each other. It didn’t yet hurt, which is why I could feel each bone moving in ways they were not supposed to.

I have told the rest of this story recently so I am not going to rehash it here. What you are going to read is about the email I got the other night and what I’ve continued to discover over the past couple of weeks.

Seeing the world differently didn’t begin with the hit and run. Instead, that was just another nudge from the universe moving me into a different orbit. Yes, it was a really hard nudge.

Do I think the hit & run was pre-destined? A to-do item on God’s calendar?

No. But it I think it happened at a fork in the path of possible realities. One outcome leads one way, another outcome leads another way. I have no idea how it came to be, but I don’t think it was purely ‘random’. Maybe you do and that’s ok.

Two nights ago at 1:23 am I got a message from a burner email here at SubStack. It was from a person who’d read ‘A hit & run isn’t really a big deal’.

Sometime about 5-6 years ago this person had hit a cyclist and fled the scene. The author of the email described in pretty gruesome detail the sound of hitting the cyclist, the thoughts that ran through this person’s head. The surprise and immediate terror, which rolled into anger for the rider being there in the first place and ‘causing the accident’. The author described this unfolding into the sickening fear of what ‘would’ happen to them if they had perhaps killed the rider. And if that person had stopped.

So the driver, looking in the rearview mirror at the un-moving body that had slammed headfirst into a mailbox post after getting creamed by this person’s truck (they said it was a truck and this is their description) sped off.

They went on to recount in some detail the hell their life had descended into, day after day after terrible day every day, since then reliving the past incident. To this day, this person lives in fear they’d be caugh in the near futuret, and “their life would be ruined'“. The person was now divorced. An alcoholic. Deep in debt, unable to keep a job, suffering from panic attacks, anxiety and depression. To me, it sounded like coming clean might be a step up. A path to a much better place.

But no. This person is stuck. Unwilling or unable to come forward. Trapped in a hellish trick box of their own making. Each day this person borrows at a heavy cost from yesterday and tomorrow. And, this debt is far more expensive than their financial obligations.

In the email, this person also asked me to forgive them for their act. I was a proxy for the person they had hit. I have read the email now for the last time and deleted it this morning.

This person made a series of incredibly bad decisions in a moment of distraction, then selfishness and has chosen to live with it forever. The interest this person compounds from living on borrowed time, projecting backwards and forwards without any real change, grows daily. This person is now buried in this debt and perceives no other option than to keep borrowing.

This sounds exactly like hell on earth.

Can I forgive their crime? No, that is not up to me. So if you are the author and are reading this, you have to find your own path to redemption. Stop borrowing. Time to pay off that debt.

The title of this piece is ‘Living on Borrowed Time’.

It is an unfortunate reality that today we live in a world where increasingly self-centeredness, narcissism, victimhood and a general desire for lack of accountability, short cuts, easy-buttons and comfort above all else rules. 

The pervasiveness of social media, promoting curated lives that aren’t real, influencers on YouTube spinning tales of Lambos, waterfront cribs in Miami, and VIP Bottle Service if you sign up for their get rich quick programs. Or perhaps the leased matte royal blue $300k sports sporting an Instagram tag sticker in the window. It’s no longer unusual, it’s the new normal.

I believe we are growing bankrupt in the things that matter. True, genuine and sustained connection between each other. A general absence of performing service or for the wellbeing of others (either big or small).

The fact that anxiety, loneliness and suicides are on a hockey stick curve, and that generally healthy people spend a thousand dollars a month for the Ozempic easy button, (drugs with real benefits to those who truly need them) to go from normal weight to gaunt overnight with no effort is Exhibit A in the indictment, your honor.

Hard things build strength. Hard things are essential. Enduring hard things are the insurance you pay into for when shit gets real and you need to not fold. And, in life, eventually shit will get real.

There is a prevailing perception of reality today, where everyone else is living their best most perfect life, and I am not, so what the fuck is up with that?!. I am a victim, I am angry or I am anxiety riddled because I have to work harder than I should to make ends meet. My life isn’t glamorous or frictionless.

Know anybody who thinks like that? Bet you do.

The email I got is yet another form of this. Sorry, life can be hard on occasion. Sometimes we need to make hard choices. Michael Easter discusses this in his book, ‘The Comfort Crisis’. A must read.

Living on Borrowed Time is about us being trained to look past what is, what’s right now. The reality that is here. Now. We spend our time regretting and replaying what was or focusing and fretting on what might be, but probably won’t be. When we do this, we borrow high cost, low value energy from the past or the future-or worse, both.

Let me illustrate what I mean. I recall driving down a country road many years ago with my then young son, my mind consumed with work. I was fixated on a meeting still off in the future. Not planning mind you. Fixating. There is a difference.

I was playing out what might happen (none of which actually did) and how I would respond to the argument and escalating rancor that the meeting would surely trigger (which it didn’t). I thought about the calls and conversations that would inevitably ensure and the drama that would spin out of control for days on end. I played out an entire multi-day situation involving multiple people in which I was the protagonist on a Hero’s Journey and all of it was total bullshit.

I missed the turn by about 10 minutes. Grumbling, knowing we’d now be late to the birthday party he had been invited to (and was so excited for). Believe it or not, I actually blamed the people in the imaginary meeting unfolding in my head for missing the turn! How crazy is that?!

Then I realized my young son had been talking to me but it had been nothing more than Charlie Brown noise to me.

He repeated, “Dad, did you see that Bald Eagle in the tree? It was really big and had a white head. Dad, was that really a Bald Eagle?!”

I had missed it because I had borrowed time from a the future that wasn’t even real and missed something that was.

This is the cost of Living on Borrowed Time. That shit is expensive.

This was surely my issue. Up until that point, things had been pretty easy. I wasn’t familiar with the concept of Misogi (Do hard things, don’t die) or even Kintsugi (broen Japanese pottery repaired with gold to celebrate the flaws. It’s true art.)

For me, it took a catastrophic implosion of my old life five years ago, gaining 50 pounds, sinking into anxiety and panic attacks because I saw myself as a victim of circumstance. At the time, I had to contend with every imaginable, terrible thing, save being diagnosed with terminal cancer all at once but I could not deal with it because I wasn’t used to doing hard things.

Oh, whoa is me. I give up and will just accept this hell. Fortunately, a few others didn’t share my perception and kicked my ass into gear. I was borrowing heavily and daily from the past and the future, with no way to repay that debt in sight.

“Don’t like your reality Hersh? Well then fucking change it.” This was one piece of advice I got. And I did. Why? Because they held me accountable and called bullshit.

This person told me I was borrowing time currency from the past and future and with no way of getting rid of the debt. Instead I was just accruing more and more by just sitting there and repeating yesterday the next day.

So I got at it and did the hard work. Yeah, I lost the weight. I got healthy and I got strong. I came back and discovered fulfilling work. Eighteen months after being in the worst shape in my life, mentally and emotionally wrecked, with little to show for years of effort; broken and despondent I found myself competing in Gravel Worlds. Not just showing up but legitimately competing.

I logged off of Facebook entirely. I unfriended and blocked anything and anyone on Instagram that wasn’t positive. I stuck with philosophy, stoicism, health, mindfulness, wellness, and nutrition related topics. Or people tied to the sport I love. Finally, art. That’s it. Which means I got rid of 90% of the accounts and noise. Good riddance.

Everything changed when I realized I could choose differently and head up a different path if I stopped borrowing from the past and future. Which is why this SubStack is called ‘The Chosen Path.’ So now you know.

I stopped borrowing time and everything shifted.

Looking back, the time we spend living in the past or the future is the equivalent of taking out a high interest loan to gamble and lose it all at a casino. You have nothing to show for it and you still have to pay the bill.

My advice is don’t borrow time. It is too expensive.