Someday, our future descendants won’t be surprised that we made a mess of the world — but that we did it so consistently.
And no, this isn’t a screed for or against climate change.
The science is clear: it’s real and unfolding in countless ways we can’t fully predict — because nature is vast, dynamic, and mysterious.
What our descendants may truly marvel at is our love of repetition.
How fond we’ve become of marking the passage of time by doing the same thing over and over.
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Repetition as Ritual
Take North Texas, for example. As spring gives way to summer, we begin the annual countdown:
Just how hot will it get this year?
According to NOAA, 2022 and 2023 ranked as the 7th and 6th hottest years since record keeping began in 1924. Last year placed 33rd.
But it’s not just temperature we track.
We count Snapchat streaks. Solitaire streaks (currently sitting at 316 days — thank you, kindly).
We log consecutive daily runs, meals entered on MyFitnessPal, or our sleep scores.
We track journaling streaks, days reading on our Kindle, or nights of sobriety.
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My Own Streak
Personally, my longest streak is 2,173 consecutive days on Duolingo, studying French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
I secretly do this in the hopes that one day someone says:
“Oh, that’s Cesar. He’s into history, reading, and Stoicism. Knows like four languages. He’s kind of a polymath.”
But beyond this silly desire, the streak — like any other — is just a number.
Much like the count of 100-degree days.
Numbers alone don’t tell the story.
Context does.
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What the Numbers Don’t Show
My Duolingo streak began in August 2019 —
Nine months before COVID changed everything.
Before lockdowns.
Before masks and social distancing.
Before empty grocery aisles and toilet paper shortages.
This streak isn’t about scoring points or leveling up. (Full disclosure: I opted out of that competition years ago.)
It’s something more.
It’s a marker of anti-fragility, to borrow a concept from Nassim Taleb.
As Taleb describes — and as Jonathan Haidt echoes in The Anxious Generation —
“Things need to get knocked over now and then in order to become strong.”
And I have been knocked down. Repeatedly.
Personally. Professionally.
Friends gained, friends lost.
All within the arc of these 2,173 days.
Yet — I’m still here.
Still creating.
Still searching for the best version of myself.
Learning, as Shane Parrish puts it:
“To maximize your enjoyment in life is to keep your surface area small.”
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Living the Width of Life
One of the greatest quotes I have ever read on the quality of life comes from the writer Diane Ackerman.
She noted:
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it.
I want to have lived the width of it as well.”
This a statement worth taping to your bathroom mirror or laptop screen.
So the next time you finish the day’s Wordle or a game of Scrabble online with friends, ask yourself:
Am I fully using the time I’ve been given?
Or has time taken hold of me?
Photo Credit - New York Times Games