You wanted this for so long. To find someone to spend your life with. To have this happy family. To have some measure of security. To have these quiet nights at home. And what are you doing with it?

You’re not even here for it! You’re on your phone. You’re making plans. You’re anxious. You’re dreaming of some greater, grander success.

In Tennyson’s famous poem about Odysseus, he shows that there was more to the man than someone who just wanted to get home—who just wanted to return to his family. In fact, he shows Odysseus as outright tortured, if not tragic.

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

Odysseus spent twenty years on his journey and now, he’s growing restless. He’s tired of what we’ve called the wonderful, humdrum malaise of family life. He feels misunderstood. He’s bored. He thinks this is all beneath him. Tennyson isn’t just projecting here, because that’s how the Odyssey does end—with Odysseus heading off for another journey. The man is just incapable of staying still it seems.

Most of us don’t have it quite so bad, but we do struggle to enjoy what we have built. We can’t be present. We focus on the next thing. We get distracted by greener grass. We slowly, through neglect or bad decisions, blow up a thing we not only once craved (and will miss) but so many others are jealous of.

Don’t be stupid! Be here now!

P.S. Tempus Fugit (“time flies”) and Memento Mori (remember that you must die) are both about the same thing—that none of life is guaranteed and that any of us could leave life right now.

That’s why we created the Tempus Fugit and Memento Mori medallions as reminders to be present and not waste the time you do have with your family. Grab yours today!