You're Running Out of Somedays
A reflection on time, mortality, and why “someday” is a dangerous illusion
If you're going to read one thing this week, make it this.
The word "someday" might be the most dangerous word in any language.
Not because it represents evil or harm, but because it represents the slow erosion of human potential. It's the word we use to build elaborate prisons for our dreams, complete with the illusion that we hold the keys.
Consider how often you've said it:
"Someday I'll write that book."
"Someday I'll travel to Japan."
"Someday I'll have that difficult conversation."
"Someday I'll learn to paint."
Each utterance feels like a promise to yourself, a commitment to future action. But examine the pattern more closely. Someday is where ambitions go to die a slow, comfortable death.
The ancient Romans understood something about time that we've forgotten. They carved "Memento Mori" into their buildings, wore rings engraved with skulls, commissioned paintings of wilting flowers and burning candles. They were calculating with the most precise currency that exists: the remaining days of their lives.
A Roman citizen knew that time wasn't just passing; it was being spent. Every sunrise represented a withdrawal from a finite account. Every decision to wait was a decision to purchase nothing with something irreplaceable.
We, by contrast, live as temporal millionaires who never check our balance.
The philosopher Seneca observed a curious phenomenon among his contemporaries. The same people who would carefully count their coins before making a purchase seemed utterly careless about how they spent their days. They would negotiate fiercely over the price of a villa but gladly trade years of their lives for the comfort of postponement.
This paradox persists today, perhaps more acutely. We live in an age of unprecedented longevity, which has created an illusion of unlimited time. Our great-grandparents, who expected to live to 50, treated each decade as precious. We, expecting to live to 80 or beyond, treat our forties like an extended adolescence, our fifties like a warm-up act for the main event.
But the mathematics of mortality don't care about our expectations.
The artist who dies at 33 with a body of work that transforms culture has lived more fully than the person who reaches 90 having spent decades preparing to begin living. The question isn't how many years you accumulate, but how much life you extract from the years you have.
Musonius Rufus taught his students that there are two types of people: those who treat each day as if it might be their last, and those who treat each day as if they have an infinite supply. The first group creates legacies. The second group creates excuses.
Which group do you belong to?
The honest answer probably depends on the day you're asked. Some mornings you wake up with the urgency of mortality coursing through your veins. You make the call you've been avoiding. You start the project you've been planning. You have the conversation you've been postponing. You feel the electric clarity that comes from recognizing that this day—this actual day—is irreplaceable.
Other mornings you wake up as a temporal millionaire again, convinced that your supply of tomorrows is inexhaustible. You return to the comfortable tyranny of someday.
The Stoics developed a practice to interrupt this pattern. They called it "negative visualization"—the deliberate contemplation of loss. Not to become pessimistic, but to become precise about what they valued. They would imagine losing their health, their loved ones, their own lives, not to torture themselves but to calibrate their priorities.
Imagine that today is the last day you'll ever be able to speak to your parents. How would you spend it? Now ask yourself: how do you know it isn't?
The discomfort you feel reading that question is the sound of someday colliding with reality.
This discomfort is valuable. It's the friction between the life you're living and the life you could be living. It's the gap between your daily choices and your deepest values. It's the space where transformation becomes possible.
Most people experience this friction and immediately seek comfort. They scroll through their phones, distract themselves with busy work, or make elaborate plans for someday when they'll finally address the discomfort. But the Stoics taught a different response: lean into the friction. Use it as navigation.
Your discomfort is a compass pointing toward what matters most to you.
The things you keep postponing aren't random. They're usually the things that would make your life feel most authentic, most meaningful, most aligned with who you actually are rather than who you've settled for being. The dream deferred isn't just any dream, it's the dream that would transform you in the pursuit of it.
But transformation requires action, and action requires abandoning the safety of someday.
Consider the profound arrogance embedded in postponement. When you say "someday I'll write that novel," you're assuming you'll retain your current clarity of vision, your current level of energy, your current relationships and responsibilities. You're betting that future-you will have better conditions than present-you.
This bet usually loses.
Future-you will have different problems, different energy levels, different limitations. The clarity you have about what matters today may be clouded by the compromises you make tomorrow. The passion that feels so real right now may feel abstract after years of neglect.
The window for any significant action is smaller than we think and closing faster than we expect.
Cato the Younger demonstrated this principle in the most dramatic way possible. When he realized that Caesar's rise would destroy the Roman Republic he valued above his own life, he chose death over compromise. Most of us won't face such extreme circumstances, but the principle remains: there comes a moment when the window closes. The job posting expires. The person moves away. The opportunity disappears. The body ages beyond capability.
Your somedays are not infinite. They're not even numerous. They're scarce, precious, and rapidly diminishing.
This isn't a cause for panic. It's a cause for precision.
Every choice to postpone is also a choice to prioritize something else. Every someday represents a value judgment about what deserves your limited time and attention. The question is whether you're making these judgments consciously or allowing them to happen by default.
The difference between people who live with intention and people who live with regret isn't talent, luck, or circumstances. It's the willingness to treat time as the finite resource it actually is.
📝 Today's Stoic Gameplan
Calculate your temporal wealth: If you're 35, you have roughly 16,000 days remaining. Write that number down. It's not abstract—it's your actual budget for everything you still want to accomplish, experience, and become.
Identify one high-value someday: Choose something you've been postponing that would significantly impact your sense of meaning or fulfillment. Not a minor convenience, but something that would change how you see yourself.
Act within 24 hours: Take the smallest possible step toward that someday before tomorrow ends. Not the perfect step, not the complete step, just the first step. Send one email. Make one phone call. Write one paragraph. The size of the action matters less than the breaking of inertia.
Practice temporal precision: Each time you catch yourself saying "someday," immediately ask: "When, specifically?" If you can't answer with a date, you're not making a plan—you're making an excuse.
Your somedays are not renewable resources waiting to be harvested in some perfect future. They're finite opportunities that disappear permanently with each passing day.
The most important question you can ask yourself isn't "Do I have enough time?" It's "Am I spending the time I have on what I'll wish I had spent it on?"
Time will answer that question whether you ask it or not.
Stay stoic,
SW
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And this is why I've been a student of the school of Stoicism all my life!
I will definitely book my flight today to attend the retreat I wanted to visit for so long , too expensive and too far away.
👌🏼 and will talk about this with family and friends, all sixty. Alive and kicking, but for how long… thank you for this confronting eye-opener.