I hop in the car and my instinct is to turn on a podcast.

Until I get home and turn on Netflix.

Until I go jogging and blast my recent playlist.

Until I’m afraid to turn off the noise, afraid of what I might hear in the silence.

“I don’t mind being alone,” I tell them. “In fact, I often prefer it.”

Except that I’m rarely ever alone.

I’m connected to stand up comedy videos, philosophical discussions–even sermons.

I have the company of content that could fill a lifetime.

And perhaps it won’t be a disappearing ozone layer or a nuclear war that will destroy millennials. Perhaps, it will simply be the company we keep that is really no one at all. Or the things we do that are really nothing at all.

Perhaps the toxicity of other people in our lives devaluing us is not our biggest enemy. Because we make choices every day to extract the value out of the limited moments we’ve been given.

It takes two weeks of sharing an apartment with five other adults – of sharing the workload, swapping stories, instigating debates – to realize that I may have just been passing time lately.

And that filling time does not lead to a fulfilled life.

And that today it’s easier than ever to feel busy doing nothing.

And it’s hard to make memories of doing nothing.

“I can’t remember anything,” I tell people frequently.

Except that evening at Red Lobster. It was just another week day when we slid into a booth across from each other. It was our weekly routine–nothing special.

But sometimes it takes months of committing to nothing-special conversations to dig down to the words that are harder to find, harder to push out on a whim.

And I leave, with the sweet taste of his words giving me hope for many ordinary months to come.

It takes two weeks of sharing an apartment with five people to see the contrast of my life-threatening pastime of passing time.

The pastime that’s sucking my purpose dry.

I get home to a quiet apartment, throw my keys on the counter. And just stop to consider, before turning on any noise, the Giver of Moments.

Just stop.

And maybe ten minutes of building space for these thoughts will mean hundreds of hours of God-driven thoughts ten years from now.

Maybe it will mean having memories.

Maybe it will mean memories worth having.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10