Tag Archives: Life

It’s All How It’s Dished Out

I’ve had this long-standing theory and perhaps I’ve written about it before. But this has been one of those weeks that I remind myself that life is all about balance.

Basically, we’re born and we die. Now, that period between those two monumental events of our life is filled with good stuff and bad stuff. It’s how the world works. It’s not perfect, it’s not evil. Here, let me show you this chart.

The Tim Hunter Hypothesis is that we are all given the same amount of good and bad in our lifetime. If you sat down, created two columns and started listing every good thing that’s happened to you on one side and all the bad stuff on the other, by the time you’d reach the end, you’d see that we get equal amounts of both.

Here’s the challenge. During your life, it comes in random amounts. Like, say, this week, I easily had a much larger dose of bad stuff happen than good. Oh, and there was good. I got to hold my new granddaughter and play with the grandkids. I was able to direct a video shoot for some new commercials for a client. I enjoyed a romantic dinner with my wife at Picolino’s on Valentine’s Day. I’m having lunch today with a long-time friend who beat cancer last year.  I continue to be able to write and play and create in this career-like-job I’ve crafted over the past several years.

But there was a ton of things you could consider bad stuff. Outside of my world, there was that horrific school shooting down in Florida. (see my previous blogs on that topic–I’m tapped out)  My main computer decided to wig out. The one on which most of my writing and producing is done. Things that should have taken seconds crawled along. I had to research, experiment, delete and install, all eating up the time I would normally do each week’s regular projects.  On top of that, my cell phone has been acting up and while not mentioning the company by name because they’ve been nice, a supposed fix to the port has resulted in a half-dozen visits to their store. They’ve had to install a second new screen, have gone through two ports and today, I have to drop it off and be phoneless the bulk of the day. Doable, but it just adds to the challenge.

I found out that a $1,000 check I had deposited a month ago never made it in. It was that “depositing by phone” thing that failed, but I just assumed it went in. As you can imagine, funds went short a couple of times.

Clients needed things yesterday. Extra projects came up.  Precious time disappeared so that I would get up even earlier than 4am just to get it all done.

Its weeks like this one that I remember the chart. So, I had a few challenges and, if I were keeping a weekly score, the bad probably won out over the good this week. No matter. I just take it all in stride and remember that it must mean a bunch of good is coming my way. If not next week, the week after. Eventually, it all balances out.

When life gets tough, just remember that there’s good on the way. Remember the chart. It’s all about balance. It’s all about how it’s dished out.

It really is.

Tim Hunter

The Most Valuable Thing You Have

If someone asked you, “What’s the valuable thing you have?”, what would your answer be?

It should be ‘time.’

It’s the secret to being able to do the things you want to do in this life and it all begins with realizing just how precious it is.

Time is a limited resource. When you’re younger, you’ve got all the time the world. As you add decades to your life, you hit that point where you realize the road is a lot shorter ahead than what’s behind you.

This topic came to mind when I was looking through some old photo albums and I started doing the math. It was the 1960s, which were my kindergarten through 8th grade years. Take a moment to wander back to that time for yourself and see what you remember. What were your parents talking about? What was going on in the world?

As any fan of history knows, the 1960s were tumultuous, filled with riots, wars, assassinations, racial strife, free love, and social evolution.  There’s a lot I remember about that time (and I have to do it while the thinker is still working properly) but what prints the most in my brain is my parents and their references to World War II.  Guys were sent off to war and did not see their families or sweethearts for decades. There was rationing and a genuine fear that the enemy could win and take over our country.

This is where the math part comes in. That was in the 1960s, when they were remembering the 1940s. That’s 20 years.  To put that into perspective, it would be like us talking about the 1990s, which to the younger generation seems like forever ago.  However, to us seasoned citizens, it seems like yesterday.

All this to say that the events that take place today are the ones we’ll be talking about in a fast couple of decades, which our children and grandchildren will treat like ancient history. It just goes by so quickly.

So, while not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, my biggest personal goal for 2017 is to continue what I’ve been doing the past couple of years and making every moment count. Not in June, when this is over with, or the fall, when I tackle something else and get it out of the way. Now. Today. This moment you’re spending reading the ramblings I’ve slapped down on this cyber page.

I have been blessed with many life lessons and reminders that we only have so long on this planet.  We’re here now and some day we’ll be gone. But why worry about the second part of that equation, when you can focus on the here and now.

The world is far from perfect. But I’m convinced that by taking each day as it happens, while taking steps to make the days ahead even better, we can each maximize our time here. Not for others, but for ourselves.

This week, reconnect with someone you’ve been meaning to sit down with and get caught up.  Grab coffee, send a long-winded email or a Facebook Private Message.  Reaching out to those who matter to us has never been easier and, because of that, we can tend to take it for granted.

Years ago, during my brief stint at 100.7-The Wolf in Seattle, I discovered a whole bunch of really great country music songs. I hadn’t paid much attention to them, but when you play them on the radio, you find yourself listening to the words. This Tim McGraw song really resonated with me and I hope you’ll set aside a couple of moments to enjoy it.

I love this concept. Live like you were dying.  If you found out you had a year left, you know you’d change the way you live.  So, how about doing that now, while you’ve hopefully got many years to go and make each of those years count?

Minute by minute.

Thanks for stopping by friends. Now, get out there and live!

Tim Hunter

How I Saw How You Were Thinking

This week, the series finale of “How I Met Your Mother” aired.

The episode that was 9 years in the making wrapped up the series by identifying the mom was in the aforementioned title.  Now, I’ll be honest.  While I’ve seen some scenes from the show before, until Monday night, I had never watched a full episode before.  Ever.

To me, it was a fun way to wrap up a series.  I got a chance to meet the characters, see where their lives had gone and where they were heading.  It actually reminded me of parts of my life. When the final scene rolled around, I thought, “That was pretty good.”

Then I went to the Internet and saw that fans were up in arms!  They were mad about this, upset about that. The more I read their complaints, the more I realized that it was most likely the show’s younger viewers (and when you’re almost 60, pretty much everyone else is always younger) who just haven’t had very much life experience.  They had in their mind how they wanted the show should end, how it should be clean and conclusive.

This just handed me from the news desk–life just doesn’t work out the way you had in mind.

The show had actually filmed that last scene with the kids back in 2005, so that we’d get to see them in their younger days.  The way the show wrapped up was where the writers and creators had been taking it all along.

One millennial I talked with was saying, “I’m never going to watch the reruns because I didn’t like how it ended!”  Really?  You sound like a Denver Broncos fan that recorded this year’s Super Bowl.

I’m convinced that all the outrage, all the gnashing of teeth is due to lack of life experience.  Twenty, thirty or so years from now, a light bulb will go on and you will have a whole new appreciation for that episode.  A former radio buddy whose life was cut short by lung cancer (that wasn’t how we imagined it was going to end, either) once gave me an outlook that I think of often: “If you ever want to make God laugh, tell him the plans you have for your life.”

Remember, “How I Met Your Mother” was just a show.  Those were characters, not real people.  But the writers made you care, you got to know them, they were a part of your life and now they’re gone.  That’s how it happens.  Blog or tweet your outrage, then move on and get back to what’s really happening.

Your life.

Time is a wonderful teacher.

Tim Hunter