Clock.
We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one.
– Confucius –
How aware are we, truly, of the time we have left? A resource so fragile, so fleeting—finite and irreversible. Do we ever stop long enough to notice the smallest wonders around us? To breathe them in, to feel grateful—not just for what we have accomplished, but for the people who share this brief moment with us? They, too, have a clock that is quietly ticking.
But what if the real clock isn’t the one on your phone or wrapped around your wrist? What if it's the invisible one—the one ticking quietly alongside your heart, unmoved by your worries, unaffected by your choices, always moving forward, whether you are ready or not?
And if you could stop it—pause time, even for just a single heartbeat—would you?
I know I would.
But we don’t stop. We rush through life as if we are chasing a horizon that will always remain just out of reach. We fill our days with urgency, believing we must keep moving or risk falling behind. And while daily responsibilities keeps us grounded in reality, what if, in this endless motion, we are slowly forgetting how to live?
Maybe the true gift is not in having more time, but in learning how to exist fully in the time we are given.
Lately, I’ve been reading The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom, immersing myself in its words and trying to connect them to my own life—both past and present. I’ve been reflecting on the choices I’ve made and how they have shaped the person I am today, for better or worse, and the consequences and repercussions of it all.
Even though I’m still only at the first type of wealth, I stumbled upon an exercise that hit me like a punch to the chest—a tough reality check that left me in tears.
It’s called The Time Wealth Hard Reset.
The exercise is simple: you do the math to calculate how much time you truly have left with a loved one—ideally, someone you don’t see as often as you’d like—until the oldest of the two reaches 80 years old. The number you get isn’t just time—it’s almost a countdown.
At first, I tried running the numbers mentally, but something told me to put it on paper. So, I grabbed my journal, wrote it down, and when I saw the final result, it shook me to my core.
TIME LEFT WITH AMPA
Someday, when the pages of my life end, I know that you will be one of its most beautiful chapters.
I wanted to know how much time I have left with my daughter. Or, in the opposite sense, how much time she has left with me. Not just years or months, but actual moments—the kind that matter.
Since she is with me three days a week, I based my calculations on the time we fully spend together, knowing that throughout the year there will be additional days due to vacations, holidays, or special occasions. But I wanted the number to be real—to hit me hard enough to truly grasp it.
So, here’s what the numbers look like:
- In one month, we spend 12 full days together.
- In one year, that adds up to 144 days.
- I’m currently 38 years old, which means if I reach 80, I have 42 years left.
- Multiplying those 42 years by the 144 days per year, I get:
⏳ 6,048 days.
That’s it. 6,048 more days.
Some might argue that the math could be optimized—factoring in birthdays, special trips, or moments we’ll steal from the busyness of life. But the harsh truth is that, based on simple numbers, I have just over 6,000 days left to see her, to hear her laugh, to watch her grow, to share meals together.
And that number doesn’t account for the reality that, as time passes, we may start seeing each other less.
One day, she will have her own life—which is exactly as it should be. She’ll go out with friends, fall in love, move out, maybe start a family of her own (if she chooses to). Maybe she’ll move to another city, or even another country.
And what then?
Just thinking about it makes my skin tremble and my mind spiral.
TIME LEFT WITH MOM
Love your parents. We are so busy growing up, we often forget they are growing old.
After I finished doing this exercise for Amparo and myself, I turned to my mom.
I believe we’ve been lucky enough to see each other more often as the years have passed—especially after Ampa’s mother and I separated. If that hadn’t been the case, the numbers I’m about to share would have hit me even harder—which they already did, in ways I can’t even put into words.
Without factoring in vacations, like the one that’s just ending now, the numbers are these:
- We see each other every two weekends, from Friday to Sunday, which adds up to six days per month.
- Over the course of a year, that’s 72 days together.
- My mom is 63 years old. If she reaches 80, that means we have 17 years left.
- Multiplying those 17 years by the 72 days per year, I get:
⏳ 1,224 days.
If I look at it with clear, honest eyes, that means I only have 17 more birthdays to celebrate her. And in those 17 years, we will spend only one-fifth of that time together.
If that number doesn’t hit you, then your clock might be broken.
The only way to spend more time with her is to make a conscious choice—to deliberately allocate more moments each week. And the reality is, it’s not as hard as it seems.
We already know, more or less, how often we will see each other each month. But what if it shouldn’t be left to chance? What if, instead of accepting the numbers, we change them?
What if we commit—out of pure love—to add more time to the clock?
What if we decide for example that once a week, no matter what, we will have breakfast together—and we carve it in stone? That we give it the priority it deserves. That we don’t let work, distractions, or anyone else get in the way of those moments.
Because at the end of the day, there is always a way.
There is always a workaround, always a choice—as long as we realize that time is running out. Sometimes faster than we can comprehend. In the end, having more time becomes a choice.
TIME LEFT WITH MY FRIENDS
Enjoy the little things in life… for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.
– Robert Brault –
The numbers were beginning to hit me so hard that, for a moment, I considered stopping—pushing the exercise to another day when I felt ready to face it again.
So, I did what most of us do when we need a distraction—I unlocked my phone, opened Instagram, and started scrolling, looking for anything that would pull my mind away from what I was calculating.
That’s when I came across a post from my best friend. Without hesitation, I sent her a message, telling her I loved her.
And the second I hit send, it hit me right back.
"How much time do we really have together?"
I made a coffee, lit a cigarette, and forced myself to sit down and do the math.
Since she’s the oldest of my closest friends, I used her age as the reference point. My other best friends are around the same age, so this would give me a hard-hitting reality check across the board.
- On average, we see each other twice a month—let’s be fair and stick to that.
- That adds up to 24 days per year.
- If I reach 80 years old, that gives us 42 years left.
- Multiplying 42 years by 24 days per year, I get:
⏳ 1,008 days.
And here’s where things really hit me.
If we only spend 24 days together per year for the next 42 years, that means:
- A year has 365 days.
- Over 42 years, that’s a total of 15,330 days.
- Out of those, we will only see each other 6.5% of the time.
6.5% of the rest of our lives.
Honestly, what the fuck!?
My head started spinning, my heart started pounding—the sheer realization of how low that number is knocked the air out of me.
How many more parties will we have?
How many more drinks, dances, and nights spent laughing until it hurts?
How many more deep conversations about life, love, and the shit that truly matters?
The truth is, we’re not as young as we used to be. We both have kids, careers, and responsibilities pulling us in different directions. Even if we cherish every single one of those days together—is it enough?
Luckily, I believe there’s a fix. And it’s completely within my control. It's completely in our hands.
I just need to make it a priority.
To stop letting life dictate the numbers and start rewriting them myself.
Because this? This is too important to leave up to chance.
TIME LEFT WITH MY BROTHER
A sibling is the lens through which you see your childhood.
– Ann Hood –
Once I finished the previous calculation, trying to take it all in—even with that strange, sinking feeling in my stomach—I knew I couldn’t stop there.
So, I moved on to my brother.
There are only two of us, and our age gap isn’t that big—just five years. Yet, for a while now, I’ve been thinking about how little time we actually spend together. How we’ve let our own separate lives dictate the distance. And if I’m being brutally honest with myself, it’s not just life’s circumstances—it’s an excuse, a choice:
- We see each other at most once a month.
- That adds up to just 12 days per year.
- If I reach 80 years old, that gives us 42 years left.
- Multiplying 42 years by 12 days per year, I get:
⏳ 504 days.
That’s all. Not even two full years’ worth of days.
That's a painful realization for which I just wanted to hit my head against the wall and scream as loud as I could.
And when I ran the same percentage breakdown as I did with my best friend, the numbers were so stupidly overwhelming that the only thing I could ask myself was:
Why?
Why would we let this happen?
If I fast-forward to the inevitable worst-case scenario—the day our mom is no longer here and it’s just the two of us left—what will 504 days mean then? What will they be worth when the option to change them is gone? It's the full weight of time lost.
Let’s put it in even harder numbers:
- Over the next 42 years, I’ll live approximately 15,330 days.
- Out of those, my brother and I will only be able to share 3.2% of them.
- That’s one and a half years total—when we actually have 42 years available to us.
One and a half years of time, spread over four decades.
One and a half years to be brothers.
One and a half years to celebrate birthdays.
One and a half years to reminisce, to argue, to laugh, to create new memories.
And I started wondering…
How the hell did we let it get to this point?
How did we go from spending every single day together for 27 years—from the time he was born when I was five, until I moved out at 32—to just 12 days per year?
How do I even begin to process the fact that from those 9,855 days spent under the same roof, there is now a 9,351-day gap between then and what we have left?
How do I make sense of that?
The thought of that gap in time terrifies me.
But here’s the thing. Unlike death, unlike time itself—this is fixable and it's a choice that's still ours to make.
Time doesn’t wait, but it does listen—to the choices we make, to the people we prioritize, to the love we show before it’s too late. And when the clock stops, the only thing left will be the time we decided to share.
This number doesn’t have to stay the same.
Because if we want more time together, we simply have to choose it.
TIME LEFT WITH MY DAD
I thought I had finished the exercise. I closed my notebook, my chest heavy, my thoughts tangled, my cheeks wet with tears I hadn’t realized were still falling.
I needed a break.
I walked into the kitchen to make some coffee, looking around absentmindedly for something to eat. And then, as I turned, my eyes landed on the wall where I had hung some photos—fragments of the past, frozen in time.
I let my gaze wander until it stopped on a picture of my dad.
I stared at it.
In just a few days, it will be five months since he passed—146 days, if we want to get mathematical about it. And as I stood there, letting that weight settle in, a thought hit me:
"What if I ran the numbers on him, too?"
I knew this one would be harder—not because of the calculations, but because of the questions they would force me to ask. Questions that I wasn’t sure I wanted answers to.
So, I decided to approach it differently.
Instead of just counting the time we had left, I wanted to reverse-engineer the numbers from two different timeframes:
- The years after I moved out of my parents’ home (just before my daughter was born).
- The years after my relationship ended and I started living alone.
I wanted to see how much time I had "wasted" and "missed" before he was gone.
Leaving the Nest
Amparo was born at the end of 2018, but to make it easier on my conscience, I considered the entire year—as if stretching time on paper could lessen the pain.
At that point, my dad was 75 years old, and he passed away at 81—which gave us six years in between.
Using the same structure I calculated for my daughter, and factoring out the social unrest and pandemic that limited our time together, the numbers would have looked like this:
- Three days a week, every two weeks → 6 days per month.
- In a year → 72 days.
- Across six years → 432 days.
But I know for a fact it was much less.
The social unrest made sure of that.
Covid made sure of that.
And the truth? We probably could have done more. I could have done more.
When I saw the final number—432 days—I realized it was barely more than a single year’s worth of time. One year, out of six.
And it left me wondering: Could I have done better?
Painfully, the answer is a rotund yes.
The Second Timeframe: The Numbers That Cut in Half
If I shift to the second timeframe—after I moved out to live alone—the numbers drop even further:
- Three days a week, every two weeks → 6 days per month.
- In a year → 72 days.
- From early 2021 to late 2024 → 216 days.
Half.
Half the time.
Half the meals.
Half the bike rides with Ampa.
Half the hugs, half the laughs, half of everything that could have been.
From the 11,680 days I lived with my dad from birth, those last six years only account for a pathetic, painful 3.6% of our time together.
And yet, within those 3.6% of days, he had given me everything—his love, his wisdom, his unwavering presence.
So the next question arrises: What did I give back?
The Questions That Won’t Let Go
That’s when the real questions started.
Had I been a good son?
Did I do enough?
Did I give back even a fraction of what he gave me?
I thought of every single hard but meaningful conversation, every sacrifice, every moment he had shown up for me. 32 years of effort, of providing, of teaching, of showing me how to be a good man, to be the best person I could possibly get to be.
And then I thought of the last six years.
Did he leave this world regretting the time we didn’t spend together?
Did he wish we had made different choices?
Did he wish I had?
I try to convince myself that he didn’t.
That he knew how much I loved him. That he saw me trying to make it up in the end, when his health began to decline. That those last moments mattered more than the lost ones.
But maybe this is a doubt I’ll have to live with for quite a while.
Maybe forever.
MAKING TIME COUNT
By the time I was done with this exercise—after all the calculations, the realizations, and the gut-wrenching truths—I knew I couldn’t just let it sit inside me. I had to put it into words. Not just to release it from my chest, but to turn it into something real, something I could act on.
Because after everything I had just confronted, I honestly felt that I wasn’t the same person who started writing this.
What I now had was a choice.
And if you’ve read this far, so do you.
I don’t know how much time we have left, you and I. None of us do. But I do know this:
We can decide how we use the time we still have.
So here’s what I’ve learned, and what I hope will help me—and maybe you, too—to make the clock count.
1. Awareness: Seeing Time for What It Is
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
– Benjamin Franklin –
Before anything else, before taking action, before change—there has to be awareness.
Because the hardest truths are often the ones we refuse to see.
When I calculated how much time I have left with Ampa, I really thought I had all the time in the world. But 6,048 days is not as much as it sounds. It’s a countdown.
When I ran the numbers for my mom, I was reminded that she’s aging too, and one day, it will just be my brother and me. 1,224 days left to truly be her son.
And then, when I looked at my dad’s time—not time left, but time lost—it shattered me. I can’t change those 432 days or the 3.6% of my life that I gave back to him. That’s done. That’s gone.
But what’s not gone is today.
Because there is still time left to rewrite the numbers with the people who are still here.
But only if we first wake up and acknowledge that the clock is ticking.
2. Action: Tiny Choices, Big Impact
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
– Vincent Van Gogh –
It’s easy to think that change requires huge gestures—but it doesn’t.
Spending more time with Ampa doesn’t mean quitting my job and dedicating every waking hour to her. It means being truly present when we are together. It means putting my phone down, listening more, playing more, laughing more. Just the small, everyday things.
With my mom, it means intentionally adding more days to the clock. Not just waiting for weekends to align but creating moments—breakfast every week, a coffee mid-week, calling her just because. Tiny actions, over time, will rewrite our story.
And with my friends? With my brother? It’s about understanding that time apart is not just a consequence of life—it’s a choice. And choices can be changed.
Because the smallest decisions compound into entire lifetimes.
3. Letting Go of What Doesn’t Matter: Clearing Space for What Does
You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
– Joseph Campbell –
We waste so much time on things that don’t truly matter.
Chasing busyness over presence.
Holding on to resentments that serve no purpose.
Waiting for the “right moment” to reach out, to say what we mean, to fix what’s broken.
But if there’s one thing my dad’s passing taught me, it’s that there is no right moment. There is only now.
So I choose to release the weight of what doesn’t serve me anymore.
To stop overthinking what I could have done differently and instead focus on what I can still do.
Because carrying the past doesn’t give me more time. It only takes from the time I still have.
4. Presence: The Art of Truly Being Here
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.
– Eckhart Tolle –
Time spent together means nothing if we are not truly there.
It means nothing if I’m with Ampa but my mind is elsewhere. If I sit across from my mom but I’m still stuck in my phone. If I see my friends but I'm too distracted by tomorrow's things to enjoy today.
Presence is the only way to turn time into something meaningful.
Because when the final number is written, when the last day is counted, it won’t be about how many moments we had.
It will be about how deeply we lived them.
5. Keeping Your Inner Child Alive: Living, Not Just Existing
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
– George Bernard Shaw –
Not everything in life is about countdowns and serious conversations.
Life is also about joy.
About allowing ourselves to play, to laugh, to be stupid and carefree—no matter how old we are.
Because one of the best ways to honor time is to not take it so damn seriously all the time.
I want Ampa to see me not just as a dad, but as someone who truly enjoys life.
I want my friends to remember the nights we laughed uncontrollably, not just the days we discussed responsibilities.
I want to be a person who fully experiences time, not just counts it.
6. Gratitude: The Ultimate Perspective Shift
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.
– Melody Beattie –
And in the end, this is where it all leads.
Because once you’ve seen time for what it is, once you’ve acted on it, once you’ve let go of distractions, once you’ve been present, and once you’ve embraced joy, what’s left?
Gratitude.
Gratitude for the time I still have with my mom.
Gratitude for the brother who is still here.
Gratitude for the friends who are still just a phone call away.
Gratitude for the daughter who still looks at me like I’m her entire world.
We can either mourn the time we’ve lost or honor the time we still have.
And I choose to make the clock count—because I now understand that it always has been.
TIME LEFT WITH MYSELF
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
– Steve Jobs –
While reading everything I had written—making small adjustments, checking for grammar, cohesion, verifying every calculation, going through every lesson and realization—I really thought I had reached the end.
My fingers hovered over the "publish" button.
And then, something stopped me.
Something felt off—like a whisper in the back of my mind telling me I had missed something important.
And then it hit me.
I had been so focused on the time spent with others—which was the entire point of this exercise—that I forgot to ask one of the most important questions of all:
What about me?
Could I apply the same exercise to myself?
Could I take a hard look at my own time—not the time given to others, but the time I have left with myself—and see if I’ve truly been using it?
Or have I been letting it slip away, unnoticed?
The Numbers That Matter Most
As it turns out, the numbers were already right in front of me.
- One year consists of 365 days.
- If I reach 80 years old, I have 42 years left.
- Multiplying those together, I get:
⏳ 15,330 days.
That’s the number of days I have left to live with myself.
No matter who comes and goes, no matter who I spend time with, no matter where life takes me—I will always be with me.
Every morning I wake up, every night I fall asleep.
Every thought, every emotion, every experience—I am the only constant in my own life.
The Hardest Question of All
So the real question is:
What will I do with those 15,330 days?
Because it’s easy to talk about spending more time with loved ones, about making more space for others in our lives.
But how much time do we actually spend with ourselves—not just physically, but in a way that truly matters?
How much of that time is being wasted on things that drain me, distract me, or pull me away from what I truly want?
How much time am I giving to things that don't align with who I want to become?
Am I truly living, or just existing?
The Relationship That Defines Everything
We often worry about the time we have left with others, but the time we have left with ourselves is the one that defines everything else.
If I don’t give myself the time to heal, to grow, to dream, to be truly present—then what am I even giving to those around me?
If I am not at peace with my own time, my own life, my own presence—then what kind of presence can I offer others?
Because the truth is, we are never truly alone.
We are always with ourselves.
And yet, we often treat ourselves as if we are the last person who matters.
The Final Realization
Maybe this was the lesson I was meant to learn all along.
That while it’s important to cherish the time left with those we love, it’s just as important to cherish the time left with ourselves.
Because time isn’t like a digital clock, where numbers change, reset, and cycle endlessly.
Time is an hourglass.
Every moment that passes is a grain of sand slipping through the narrow center—falling, disappearing, impossible to grasp again.
We don’t see the top half. We don’t know how much sand is left.
All we can see is what’s already fallen.
And yet, how often do we live as if the hourglass is infinite?
How often do we assume there will always be more grains, more moments, more chances?
But the truth is, we don’t get to flip the hourglass over.
There is no reset.
And that means every grain matters.
Every decision, every breath, every time we choose to be present—or choose to drift away.
Because in the end, if we don’t take ownership of our own time, no one else will do it for us.
And I refuse to let mine slip away, grain by grain, unnoticed.