I reached into the left-hand pocket of my pants to get the key to my automobile.  For just an instant, I felt a sharp rise in anxiety.  Where is my key?!  I quickly checked my other pocket; okay, cancel the panic attack.  The key was in the wrong pocket – or not the usual pocket.  Thinking back, I recall having something in my left hand when I last stood up from my car, so I had placed the key in my right-hand pocket.  Something interrupted my typical process, and the result was out of the norm.  We can be prone to make a mistake when we are not following our typical procedures.  Sometimes it’s a trivial error; other times it could be significant and costly.

What if my key had really been missing?!  Recovering from that situation would have been traumatic.  No wonder the instant surge in anxiety quickly commandeered my full attention!

If the key had been lost, the most probable cause would have been a hole in the pocket.  I have lost other items in years past due to such a hole.  That reminds me of the holiday movie, The Polar Express, in which, due to a hole in his bathrobe pocket, the young boy loses the silver bell that he received from Santa Claus – gee, Andy, I don’t think your previous comments about Rudolph triggered these thoughts, and I can’t correlate any significance to our thinking about Santa this week…  Huuummmm…

But let’s get back to that pocket.  What if I had a steady stream of money going into that pocket?  I would expect to accumulate quite a sum of money over time, unless I also had a hole in that pocket.  What if the size of the hole allowed the money to leak out of the pocket at the same rate that it was streaming into the pocket?  Then I really wouldn’t possess that money very long – just long enough for it to slip through the pocket.  I would have nothing of value to show for that money that I briefly held in my pocket.  I didn’t get to spend it, give it away, or realize any worth.  It was here, then quickly gone.

Are you reaching for your pocket now to check for holes?!  That’s not a bad idea, though chances are that your pockets are intact.  Hopefully, everything is right where you placed it and expect it to be.

But let me position the scenario a little differently.  Instead of a stream of money passing through your day, what if were something else of value?  You might still feel that sense of loss.  Realistically, you DO have a value stream available to you every day.  Did you know that you have 86,400 units of value “streaming into your pocket” every day?  And that “pocket” has a hole in it that loses those 86,400 units of value every day.  You can’t accumulate or save those units of value.  You can only use them for the brief time that they are streaming by you.  Once they slip through the hole in the pocket, they are gone and lost forever; you can’t get them back.  So, you must make the best of them while they are in your presence for that brief time.

You probably have figured out what units of value I am talking about.  There are 86,400 seconds in a 24-hour day.  Once they pass by, they are gone.  You have to use them while they are in your grasp, or the potential value quickly passes by.  You can’t save them up; you can only use them while you have them.

Make the best use out of each second every day.  Make every second count.  You don’t get to count them a second time.

I have to go now; I have a hole in my pocket, and today is quickly slipping away.