Why Do We Keep Postponing Life?
Perhaps you’ve said this to yourself more than once:
“I’ll start living the life I want once I’ve saved enough money and built a source of income that doesn’t depend on my constant presence. I’ll read that book when I have more time. I’ll spend more time with my family when my responsibilities decrease. And I’ll finally relax when I retire.”
And so, we keep waiting. We wait for more money, more time, fewer responsibilities, and a life that feels a little more settled.
But have you ever asked yourself: When will that time actually come? When will we finally feel that life has given us permission to live?
Will there be ever a future which guarantee us these things, or are we just postponing life to an endless future?
See, there is nothing wrong with preparing for the future. We should be prepared for life’s opportunities and misfortunes alike. But the question is: how do we define the future, and how do we know when it’s time to step out of the rat race and enjoy life?
So, let’s try to answer these questions through our own understanding and examine the assumptions that shape our lives.
The future is simply a time that has not yet come. We may think of it as the next three, four, five, or ten years. But when we finally reach that point, it is no longer the future; it has become our present, and another future lies ahead of us. The future keeps moving forward.
But there is another thing we need to understand: the future, as we imagine it, is an assumption about what is yet to happen. We make plans based on how we think things will unfold, but life does not always follow the course we have imagined. Yet we often allow these assumptions about tomorrow to dictate how we live today.
But we still keep making arrangements to secure our future, believing that once we reach a particular point, we will finally be able to relax and enjoy life. But what if, when we reach that point, we simply find another reason to postpone it?
We continuously build for the future. We buy property, save money, sell off our time for more money, and we never stop to ask overselves where the cycle will end. But the question is: how much is enough? And how can we be certain that the future we are preparing for will unfold as we imagine?
Perhaps the problem is that we keep moving the goalpost. We save money, and when we have saved enough, we want to save a little more. We reach one milestone, only to set another. The finish line keeps moving forward, and what once seemed sufficient no longer feels sufficient. In this pursuit, we may spend so much of our lives preparing to live that we forget to live along the way.
Let’s put the whole situation this way:
We work through our peak years, when our energy and passion are at their highest, and get lost in meeting deadlines and targets that work throws on us. We stop looking at the other side of life, telling ourselves, let’s wait, things will get better, and we’ll enjoy it later.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that we behave as though we have abundant time. We trade it for money, chase promotions, targets, worry about things that may never happen and spent it on other things that may not be worth the time and energy we give them. We make this trade to sell our time because we believe we will make it later, but trading our irreplaceable time for things that last little is a bad bargain.
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But have we ever considered what would happen if that later never came?
Imagine the Angel of Death comes to you today and tells you that your time in this world has come to an end. what would be your reaction? Perhaps you would respond that I haven’t lived my life yet. I haven’t spent time with my children. There are books on my shelf which I’ve to read, and other moments what I kept postponing because I thought I still had time.
And suppose the Angel of Death asks you that you have been given plenty of time. Why did you keep postponing the things that mattered to you?
What would be your answer?
Think about it. We sell our time in exchange of money, believing that the money we earn will eventually allow us to enjoy our life. But can we buy back the time we have spent once we retire? Can we pay twice the price, or even ten times the price, to relive those years with the energy we had then? No, we cannot.
So, choose wisely.
This does not mean we should abandon our responsibilities or stop to prepare for the future. It is about being aware of the fact that life is passing while we prepare for it. Don’t wait until retirement to read the book you love, spend time with your family, explore your life, or do the things that make you feel good and alive.
So, why do we keep Postponing life even when we know we’re Doing it?
Perhaps the most troubling part of all this is that we are aware of what we are doing, yet we continue doing it. We know that time is passing. We know we should spend more time with our families, read the books we love, and explore our interests. Yet we keep postponing these things, telling ourselves that we will get to them in an unknown future, when we are less tired and have fewer responsibilities.
Sometimes, we seek immediate relief from our worries and exhaustion. We reach for our phones, scroll through endless videos, and temporarily escape our thoughts. But before we realise it, the time we wanted to devote to something meaningful has passed. We promise ourselves that tomorrow will be different, but we only repeat the same cycle.
So, Where Are We Caught in a Bad Bargain?
I think the solution is not to stop preparing for the future, but to stop sacrificing the present for it.
We have families and responsibilities. We cannot simply abandon them in the name of living the present moment. But we should not fall into the endless trap of accumulating material things at the cost of something far more precious — our time.
There may come a point in our lives when our career and the life we have always wanted finally meet. We have earned enough to live comfortably, our financial worries have eased, and perhaps our work does not demand every waking hour. At that point we can spend more time with our families, return to the books waiting on our shelves, explore the interests we have put aside, and enjoy the life we have worked so hard to build.
But how often do we recognise that moment when it arrives? Instead, we move the goalpost. We tell ourselves that one more promotion, a little more money, or one more achievement will make life better. And so, we keep going, promising ourselves that we will slow down later, that we will spend more time with our children when work becomes less demanding, and that we will finally do the things we love when we have earned enough.
But while we keep waiting for that time, life does not wait for us. Our children grow up, years pass, and the interests that once excited us remain unexplored. We may continue to achieve more, yet the life we hoped those achievements would give us remains postponed.
And perhaps that is where we get caught: we become so busy building a life for the future that we forget to live the one we already have.
The future deserves our preparation, but the present deserves our participation.
