HEARTBEATS

Time Is Not Money. Money Doesn’t Have a Pulse.

A collective teaching on attention, presence, connection, and the currency of being alive.

We each get approximately 100,000 heartbeats a day.

If you make it to 80 years of age, that’s roughly 3 billion heartbeats in one lifetime.

Each heartbeat that passes is gone.

I’ve spent approximately 4200 beats conveying this message from my heart to yours

Yet the device carrying these words is not alive.

It can transmit my message. It can preserve my voice. It can deliver an image of my face across oceans.

It cannot become the living being on the other side of the exchange.

It can facilitate connection, but it is not itself the relationship.

So I wonder…

How many heartbeats have we taken for granted?

How many have we spent looking at representations of life while life was happening around us?

How many have we shared with someone we love without recognizing the extraordinary gift of their presence?

And how many do we have left?

We don’t know.

We were taught that time is money.

But money doesn’t have a pulse. We do.

Invest wisely. ❤️

---

I. The Currency We Never Learned to Count

We are taught to count almost everything.

Our money.

Our steps.

Our calories.

Our followers.

Our achievements.

Our hours worked.

Our hours slept.

Our years of experience.

Our years until retirement.

We measure what we produce, accumulate, consume, and accomplish.

How often do we consider the currency underwriting every one of those activities?

Our living time.

Our heartbeats.

At an average heart rate of 70 beats per minute, approximately 700 heartbeats pass through a ten-minute window.

That’s approximately 4,200 heartbeats in an hour.

About 100,800 in a day.

nearly three billion across 80 years, if that average were maintained.

These are illustrative estimates, not a fixed allotment. Heart rates change throughout our lives, and no one knows the precise number of beats they have remaining & that uncertainty is my point.

We can open a banking application and see our available balance.

We can calculate how much money we need for a purchase.

We can estimate how long it might take to earn more.

But there is no application that can reliably display the number of heartbeats remaining in our lives.

We know the currency is finite.

We do not know the balance.

And yet we organize so much of our existence around accumulating a resource that can be replenished while overlooking the living time that cannot.

Money is a tool for supporting life.

Somewhere along the way, we began treating life as the resource that exists to produce money.

Who taught us that exchange?

And who benefits when we never examine it?

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II. When Achievement Became god

When achievement becomes god, identity becomes a performance review with no limits.

The goal is reached.

The goal moves.

The promotion arrives.

A higher title appears.

The bank account grows.

The definition of enough grows with it.

We accomplish what we once believed would finally make us feel successful, only to discover another standard waiting beyond it.

And so we continue.

We postpone rest.

We postpone pleasure.

We postpone connection.

We postpone inhabiting the very life we claim we are working so hard to improve.

When I earn more, I’ll relax.

When I finish this project, I’ll be present.

When I achieve that milestone, I’ll finally enjoy my life.

But tomorrow is extraordinarily persuasive.

It always offers us a future in which our present sacrifices will make sense.

And sometimes they do.

Work matters. Planning matters. Discipline matters. Building something meaningful often requires sustained effort.

But when does purposeful effort become endless postponement?

When does ambition stop serving life and begin consuming it?

When does the pursuit of security become an inability to feel secure?

When does a person’s worth become so entangled with their accomplishments that simply being alive no longer feels sufficient?

Excellence has standards.

Worship demands sacrifices.

Achievement can be a beautiful expression of human capacity.

It was never meant to become the authority that grants a human being permission to be whole.

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III. The Hourglass We Carry

Imagine an hourglass.

The sand continues falling whether you admire it, ignore it, or turn your attention elsewhere.

It does not stop because you are busy.

It does not pause because you are distracted.

It does not wait for you to finish one more task.

Our hearts are not hourglasses in a literal biological sense. Their rhythms vary, and our remaining lives cannot be calculated by counting down a predetermined number of beats.

But the image reminds us of something unmistakable.

Life continues while our attention is elsewhere.

We may spend an afternoon rehearsing a conversation that ended yesterday.

We may spend dinner worrying about a meeting scheduled for tomorrow.

We may spend a beautiful morning comparing our lives with people whose experiences we know only through carefully selected images.

& sometimes, without noticing, we become spectators of our own existence.

Our bodies are here but our attention is everywhere else.

We can be physically present while mentally absent.

The strange thing is that we often recognize this only after a moment has passed.

After the child has grown.

After the visit has ended.

After the person is gone.

After the season has changed.

We look backward and realize that what once seemed ordinary was extraordinary precisely because it was happening only once.

Yeah, that hit me hard too.

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IV. The Device That Does Not Have a Pulse

Consider how much of our daily attention is mediated through devices.

We wake up and reach for a screen.

We check notifications before noticing the light entering the room.

We read other people’s thoughts before asking ourselves what we think.

We document experiences while they are unfolding.

We search for something interesting even when the life around us is already asking to be noticed.

This device is exceptionally good at holding our attention.

It offers novelty.

Connection.

Information.

Entertainment.

Recognition.

Relief from boredom.

Relief from uncertainty.

Sometimes even relief from loneliness.

None of these things is inherently wrong.

A device can carry a daughter’s voice to her mother.

It can connect friends separated by continents.

It can help someone learn, create, seek support, or access care.

It can make a meaningful relationship possible across distance.

Technology is not the villain of this story.

Unexamined attention is the question.

Because there is a difference between using a device to participate in life and allowing the device to continually displace our participation in life.

another distinction worth making…

A screen can deliver the voice of someone who loves us.

A breathing exercise on a device can help us regulate our own nervous system.

A conversation through a phone can provide genuine emotional connection and co-regulation.

But the device itself is not the living source of that reciprocity.

It is the medium.

The message travels through the device. The relationship lives between beings.

Have we begun confusing access to representations of life with the experience of living?

Have we become so accustomed to receiving connection through screens that we sometimes forget to notice the living world on the other side of them?

What happens when we are no longer using the device intentionally, but reaching for it automatically or unconsciously?

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V. Who Profits From Your Heartbeats?

Here is where the conversation becomes larger than personal discipline.

Our attention is not merely something we give away.

It is something institutions and businesses actively compete to capture.

Much of the digital economy is structured around engagement.

How long did you watch?

How many times did you return?

What made you click?

What kept you scrolling?

What captured your curiosity?

What provoked a reaction?

What made you stay?

The system does not need to know whether those minutes felt meaningful to you in order to record them as successful engagement.

Your attention can generate advertising revenue, behavioral data, or commercial opportunity.

A living being gives finite attention to a system that can convert some of that attention into financial value.

The system counts engagement.

The person pays in heartbeats.

Not every minute spent online is wasted. Not every company operates identically. And people can derive enormous value from digital participation.

The question is whether the exchange is conscious.

Did I choose this?

Did it nourish me?

Did it teach me something?

Did it connect me with someone?

Did it help me create?

Did I enjoy it?

Or did I arrive here intending to spend five minutes and discover that an hour of my life had passed without my noticing?

An hour.

Approximately 4,200 heartbeats at 70 beats per minute.

Not a moral failure.

Not a reason for shame.

But a reason to become curious.

Who receives the benefit of my attention, and what do I receive in return?

Because when attention becomes a commodity, the economy is not competing only for our purchasing power.

It is competing for our participation in the moments of our lives that we will never get back.

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VI. Presence Is Not Another Performance Review

The moment we begin talking about heartbeats, investments, and attention, we risk creating another system of measurement.

Was I present enough?

Did I use today wisely?

Did I waste too much time?

Am I failing to appreciate my life?

And suddenly, even presence becomes something to achieve.

Another metric.

Another standard.

Another reason to feel inadequate.

But that would miss the teaching entirely.

Your heart does not have to justify every beat.

Rest is not wasted time.

Grief is not wasted time.

Daydreaming is not wasted time.

Being uncertain is not wasted time.

Sitting quietly is not wasted time.

Laughing at something ridiculous is not wasted time.

Sometimes watching a movie, playing a game, or scrolling through something funny is exactly what we consciously want to do.

Free will 🙂

A life well lived is not a life in which every minute produces something meaningful enough to report.

We are not here to turn our existence into an edge of your seat thriller or romcom.

We are here to live like every heartbeat has value because IT DOES.

So when I ask what percentage of our heartbeats we fully inhabit, I am not suggesting that presence can be precisely measured or that we should remain continuously self-aware.

Human attention naturally wanders.

Our minds remember, imagine, plan, and rest.

Those capacities are part of being human.

The invitation is simpler.

Notice when you have drifted away from the life you want to participate in

allow yourself to return.

Without punishment.

Without a score.

Without another performance review.

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VII. The Heartbeat Behind the Message

Return to the approximately 700 heartbeats it might take to write or read a message over ten minutes.

What changes when we recognize that another person’s communication is made from their finite living time?

A friend calls.

A child asks us to listen.

A partner tries to explain something difficult.

A parent tells a familiar story.

A stranger offers a moment of kindness.

These encounters may seem ordinary because they happen within the routines of our days.

But each requires something that cannot be manufactured.

A living being giving part of their life to an exchange.

This is why attention can be such a profound expression of care.

Not because we owe everyone unlimited access to us.

We do not.

Not because love requires us to be constantly available.

It does not.

And not because every relationship deserves the same investment.

Attention is meaningful precisely because it is finite, and sovereignty includes choosing where it goes.

We can honor another person’s heartbeats while respecting our own.

We can listen without abandoning ourselves.

We can give generously without giving endlessly.

We can be present without making ourselves permanently accessible.

Reverence does not require self-erasure.

It requires recognition.

The person across from us is not an endless source of service, comfort, affection, labor, or reassurance.

They are a living being whose time is passing too.

Their life is not an amenity.

Their attention is not an entitlement.

Their presence is not guaranteed.

And neither is ours.

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VIII. The Living World Is Not Waiting for Us to Finish

A tree does not wait until we read every email to grow.

A child does not pause becoming while we pursue the next milestone.

A sunrise does not reschedule itself because we were too distracted to notice.

A loved one’s laughter does not become less temporary because we assume we’ll hear it again tomorrow.

The world continues unfolding.

And so do we.

We can spend years preparing for a future life without realizing that the preparation has become our present life.

There is nothing wrong with building for tomorrow.

There is wisdom in saving, planning, working, and making sacrifices for things that matter.

But a future worth building should not require us to abandon the present entirely or take for granted the heartbeats that surround us.

The life we’re building and the life we’re living are not supposed to be strangers.

We can pursue meaningful goals while still noticing the people beside us.

We can work hard and still allow ourselves moments of delight.

We can prepare for tomorrow without treating today as disposable.

We can become without postponing wholeness.

Because wholeness is not the reward awaiting us at the end of achievement.

Wholeness is the ground from which becoming occurs.

And a heartbeat does not need a trophy to count as life.

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IX. What Does It Mean to Invest Wisely?

Investing our heartbeats wisely is not about maximizing productivity.

It is about alignment.

Not perfect alignment.

Not uninterrupted presence.

Not a life without obligations, difficult seasons, or unavoidable demands.

But an ongoing willingness to ask whether the way we spend our living time reflects what we actually value. Whewww.

If we say family matters, do our relationships receive meaningful attention?

If we say health matters, do we make room to care for our bodies where circumstances allow?

If we say creativity matters, do we permit ourselves to create without requiring every creation to become profitable?

If we say freedom matters, do we examine the systems and habits that continually claim our attention?

If we say love matters, do we practice it beyond the language of admiration with reverence and reciprocity.

And if we say life is sacred, do we recognize that sacredness in ordinary moments not only in accomplishments?

These are not questions designed to produce guilt.

They are invitations to consciousness.

Because our values are not revealed only through what we declare.

They are also expressed through the patterns of our attentions.

When those patterns no longer reflect what matters to us, we are allowed to change them.

Not tomorrow.

Not after the next promotion.

Not when the bank account reaches some final number.

Now.

In the life that is already happening.

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X. Your Last Heartbeat

We do not know which heartbeat will be our last.

That uncertainty can be frightening if we treat it as a countdown.

But it can also deepen our appreciation for what is here.

Not through panic.

Not through urgency that makes every moment feel like an obligation.

And certainly not through the demand to make every day exceptional.

Rather, through a gentler recognition:

This conversation is happening now.

This person is here now.

This breath is available now.

This moment of ordinary existence is part of the life we once hoped to have.

We may have plans for decades ahead.

We may have dreams still unfolding.

We may have chapters we cannot yet imagine.

And we should be free to build toward them.

But we do not have to wait for the final chapter to discover whether the book was worth inhabiting. 😭

A life is not valuable only when it becomes a story worth telling.

It is valuable while it is being lived.

Even in the quiet chapters.

Even in the unfinished chapters.

Even when nobody is watching.

Even when nothing is being produced.

Even when all we are doing is being here.

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XI. From My Heart to Yours

So here we are.

Two living beings who may never occupy the same room.

Connected by words sharing a concept through a device that does not itself possess a heartbeat.

My thoughts can awaken.

My seeds of awareness can take root.

A moment of recognition can travel from one life into another.

Technology may carry the message but it is our living participation that gives the exchange meaning.

My invitation is for you to remember the living being beneath all the identities, accomplishments, obligations, and distractions.

The one whose heart continues beating while the world asks for more.

The one whose worth was never established by a performance review.

The one whose life is happening now.

We each experience approximately 100,000 heartbeats a day.

We do not know how many remain.

Even though we cannot choose every circumstance in which those heartbeats occur, we can become more conscious of the presence we give to the life moving through us and the lives we touch beyond ourselves.

So ask yourself:

If nobody could witness, measure, monetize, applaud, or reward what you did with your life, would you still consider your heartbeats wisely invested?

Not every heartbeat needs to accomplish something.

Not every moment needs to become a memory.

Not every experience needs to be shared.

Sometimes the wisest investment is simply to notice that we are alive.

See the hawk.

The touch the frog.

Swim with our kids.

To listen.

To love.

To rest.

To laugh.

To return.

Because time was life long before money existed.

Money doesn’t have a pulse.

We do.

And the next heartbeat?

It’s happening now.

Invest wisely. ❤️

Thank you for sharing your heartbeats with me.