What if....

I tend not to waste time on “What If’s” anymore. It seems rather pointless, to ruminate on how my life would have been if I had not wasted time in dead end jobs, relationships, or making extremely poor financial choices. I now realize that although there are many things I regret in life, rather than spending time focusing on the “what if”, my time and energy are much better spent focusing on solutions. And although the following sentence sounds extremely off topic; I really am not a fan of science fiction books, movies, etc. So when a question/idea popped in my head the other day that focused both on asking “what if” and had a hypothetical, sci-fi movie feel, I did not allow myself to think about it too hard. But, this question has popped back into my head multiple times over the last few days. I have realized that the answer to the question could have real life applications, so I figured, why not spend a little time pondering this internal query.

WHAT IF WE WERE ONLY GIVEN A CERTAIN NUMBER OF WORDS TO USE OUR ENTIRE LIFE?

What if, after we reached a certain age of accountability (let’s say 16 years old), we were only given 10 billion words to use, either written or spoken, and then our life ended.

So if we wanted to live to be 70, that would leave us 54 years that we would have to use our words wisely. That would equal approximately 185,185,185 words a year, 507,357 a day, which only breaks down to 28,186 an hour (based on 18 hours of awake time). If you wanted to live 10-30 more years, this would significantly reduce the words you could use. (I am pretty sure my math is flawed, but you get the jest).

How would we want to use our words if we knew each one we spoke took time off of our life? Would we use them to condemn the mother whose child climbed into the gorilla cage, or to condemn others that supported her? Would we allow ourselves to rant about situations completely out of our control? Would we spend time telling our children no or lecturing, when a simple explanation would suffice? Would we spend time complaining about what we did not have? Would we waste time talking bad about others, just because they do not make the same choices we do? What words would we realize are unnecessary and unfruitful? What words would we determine were unnecessary, such as curse words and name calling? What jobs would no longer exist, such as journalism, the music industry, etc. Social media would most likely not exist, because we would not want to waste our words interacting via the internet, especially regarding things that did not necessarily matter to us personally.

On the flip side, what words would we want to use more of? I tend to think I would want to “waste” my words telling others I love them, encouraging them, leading them to Christ, teaching, uplifting, etc. Maybe this is why these are the things the Bible says to focus on. I would want to teach my child to speak moderately, kindly and wisely. I would want him to realize the impact of his words, so that once his words impacted the length of his life he would know the best way to use them. I would want to use my words planning adventures and expressing joy in my life.

I acknowledge that this concept leads to a lot of pointless questions, and I am very grateful this is hypothetical and not a fact of my life. I know that if this concept was true it would lead to some people becoming hermits, just to add years to their lives, while others lives would be shortened, because they simply could not contain their words. I also recognize that so much of the life we appreciate in America is built on words, opinions and debates. I would seriously miss reading novels, magazine articles and listening to music, since a wide variety of these would most likely not exist. But, spending time thinking about this, has made me think more about the importance of the words I speak, and I am hoping to frame more of my conversations with this question, knowing that the words I speak that are uplifting are not wasted words, while many of the other words I speak in a day (complaints, talking rather than listening to others, rants, etc.) have no real purpose. Of course, even if this concept were true, there are probably days that I would still feel these “wasted” words were necessary, but I am betting this would happen a lot less often.

By the way, if I only had a certain number of words to use I would have just “wasted” about 820 of them on this blog post….

P.S. My husband just pointed out that there was a movie made a few years ago based on this exact concept, which I actually remember seeing now, so apparently this is not an original thought at all.