There’s a little-known fact that the average human spends about six months of their life waiting at red lights. That’s right. Six months. I thought about this the other day as I sat at a red light that refused to budge in hue.
At any rate. Six months.
And here’s another little-known fact. The average person spends about 3 hours and 15 minutes a day on their phone, and younger adults (especially 18–34) often double that.
If we take just 3 hours a day over an average lifespan of 73 years, that’s roughly 8–9 years of life on your phone.
Of that, about 2½–3 years are spent just scrolling on social media alone.
That is a lot of thumb flicking, eyes glazing, with the mind going elsewhere.
Add those together, and we start to see the light. We are living a lot of our lives in the in-betweens. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the light to change. Waiting for the next notification, the next plan, the next version of “later.”
But maybe the red lights and even the blue light of the endless scrolling are really trying to tell us something altogether different.
Maybe they’re tiny reminders that life isn’t only the going. In fact, our lives are all about the being. We can find our place in the moments of the waiting. The breathing. The quiet seconds when nothing is happening but everything is still moving and changing.
We tend to think meaning lives in motion — in productivity, in getting there. But maybe it also hides in those pauses.
Our world just doesn’t stop at those red lights. It is just another way that the Universe asks us to notice. The beautiful, little things. The sound of rain on the windshield. The person in the car beside us, singing their heart out. The tiny bird, sitting on the telephone wires.
Six months at red lights. Nine years scrolling. Maybe we can reclaim a few of those minutes by simply being where we are. Looking up. Looking around. And seeing.
Sometimes the most important part of the journey is the stop. The pause. The realization.
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“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” — Anne Lamott
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“Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.” — John De Paola
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“Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Your life requires your presence to be lived. Be there.” — Brooke Hampton
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