I want to follow up on the cost of inaction with a personal story today.  I grew up in a house with a lot of fear of loss. We always planned on things months out, always had plenty of things to take care of us long term if something happened or to accommodate a change in plans.  Believe me, we were very fortunate in that regard.  However, a pattern developed where we would have all of these things and not be able to use them before they went bad….we would overstuff and overconsume in the name of being prepared, only to not have what we needed when the time came or we would have to throw things out that had potentially been really good or helpful but we never used them.  My mom even had a newer car that she hardly ever drove because she would take my dad’s car, and this poor vehicle had wear from disuse.  It literally struggled because it hadn’t been used.  

So my story is this: I continued that pattern, always being prepared whether it was a surplus of pens or over the counter medicines or makeup, or toys or clothes etc. etc.  The other day I was looking for a hair tool and I saw that I had a whole stash of unopened vitamins and remedies that I never used—and had forgotten about.  As I started going through them, I realized that about half were expired.  The same day, I was at my desk working on a project and I wanted a new color pen.  I had a set of old pens in my desk for YEARS that I had been waiting to use because I hadn’t ever been able to find the color after my initial purchase.  Well, I decided that it was the day to use these pens and as soon as I started writing with them, I knew they were dead.  They had never been used, they were full of ink, and no matter what I did, the ink just would not flow—it had dried up before I could even use it.  So all of this preparation over the years, the accumulation of stuff, the anticipation of the “right time” to use these things led to their death.  It was wasted. 

The point of this story is exactly what I discussed about Loren’s quote yesterday.  When we refuse to move or take actions we know we need to, we let it go to waste.  Don’t let our creative talent, our lives go to waste because we are waiting for the proper moment.  Don’t sit on our laurels thinking that we have done what we can and that our past success is enough.  No, we need to adapt and take account of what we are working with now and we need to never take for granted the time we have and the fact that we can do it NOW.  There isn’t anything else but now, and now moves quickly.  Before we know it, the time passes and we can’t get that back—and that is the greatest cost of inaction: the waste of our greatest resource.  Life can be challenging enough without looking back and wishing we’d done something differently when we had the chance.  Take the chance now.  Live now before we take all the perfectly pretty, unused, unopened packages to the grave simply because they were never used.  It’s said the most expensive place in the world is the graveyard because of the ideas that people died with.  Don’t let our lives become that version of the story.  Live.  Enjoy now.