1/100,000th of a Year

Sixty seconds is a bit more than 1/100,000th of a year. Assuming an average heart rate of 80 beats per minute, and assuming life expectancy is 78, you live — according to how many heartbeats you'll have — about a millionth of your life during that minute.

You can do something important in just one minute, and every minute gives you another chance to do something important. Thus, you get a million chances to do something important with your life. Even subtracting the numbers wasted (hardly!) in sleep, you're still left with over 600,000 chances to do something important before you die.

This is the way I see it. Should we not each try to do something important every minute we can? Each day, when I awaken at the usual time, I fret that by noon I might not have done a single important thing all day!

At the Pearly Gates, will St. Peter consult his big book and tally up all one's important things. Your important minutes? What number am I up to by now? 10,000? 100?

Depending on the importance of a thing, depending on the one particular minute, can only one minute mean salvation for all the others squandered?

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” — Sydney Carlton, "A Tale of Two Cities"

I fear I am woefully behind in my minutes of important things done. But can even one important minute mean my salvation?

I'm a billionaire, so for me, it is the best of times, not the worst of times. While Dickens sees this counterintuitive duality as life, I prefer to cruise without obstruction. The minutes that go by for me, I see as accrued interest, portfolio enrichment, and an increase in net worth. Each minute, each millionth of my life, portends well for my ever-continuing best of times. Even when I sleep, I'm doing something. I'm earning.

Yet, this is mere self-serving. Passive self-indulgence. Hardly gravitas.

When I do get to the Pearly Gates, after my proving to myself that — indeed — "you can't take it with you," I'll find all I have are the minutes I was given.

I struggle over the gravitas I seem to eschew in my quotidian machinations. Do I life just for myself? Where is my gravitas? What is gravitas, after all? Seriousness. Gravity.

Gravity!

I invoke Einstein, who showed how gravity slows down time for the person under its pull. Marrying the physical with the metaphysical, I realize that not all minutes are created equal. Some are heavier.

The more gravitas, the longer my minute under its pull.

With twice the gravitas, each of my minutes can count as two. And while I've found it impossible to do anything important in just a minute, I feel twice as much can be accomplished in two.

Now I get it. The more important a thing I do, the longer the minute during which I do it. Life extension via time dilation.

It took me only a minute to sign all the papers. But for me, that minute time-dilated out to a lifetime worth living.

I divested my entire fortune. Hundreds of millions of dollars. I aimed to cut a wide swath through poverty, ignorance, malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, and even war.

It was a far, far better thing that I did, than I have ever done.

I know it wouldn't be enough. I knew it would hardly make a blip on humanity's radar. But I did it because it was an important thing. Not necessarily for me or for others or even the world. Some things are just important in and of themselves — in the absolute.

I felt the pull of gravitas. And so my defining minute stretched into two. Then those two into a lifetime. And as I close my eyes for the last time and meet whomever, at whatever gates there are, I fear what I will hear.

"It was hardly enough."

"I know," I respond.

"But you did what you could. You tried.

Redemption isn't just what you do for others; you will find you also do it for yourself. That's the bonus.

And it was a far, far better rest that I would go to than I have ever known.