Family time is incredibly undervalued

If you look at it like money, once you turn 18, you are absolutely skint on the amount of time you have left to spend with your family compared to the time you had with them during childhood. Look at it like a university student who's just bought a new car and therefore now has no money, but sadly, in your case, once you've spent your 18 years, you can't get your money (time) back, whereas, they can...

This whole topic was brought to my attention via Nathaniel Drew's new video 'The pandemic separated us. We finally reconnected', in which he talks about and refers to the article called 'The Tail End' by Wait But Why. This article goes in-depth on the fact that when you move out of your family home at whatever age, you have spent the vast majority of the time that you will spend with your parents over the course of your life.

Before you move out of your family home, you spend an average of around 95% of your time with your parents, seeing them every day, eating meals together etc. But due to this being a daily occurrence it's almost taken for granted, and once you move out and into your own place you realise how special that time was, and how little you're going to see them in relation to your childhood.

For example, say you decide to see your parents an average 5 times a year after you move out, which is the equivalent of seeing them once every two and a half months, and with let's say an average of two days at a time, that's therefore 10 days (on average) that you see your parents per year. To then put that into perspective, that's close to 3% of the amount of time you spent with them during your childhood per year until you moved out. And if that average were to continue, then it'd take around 33 years of visiting your parents 5 times a year for 2 days (average) at a time, for that average to equivalate to one year at home prior to you moving out.

The average parent is around 50-60 years old by the time their child turns 19/20, so if that 10 days a year stays consistent, then that's around about only 300 or so, days left to see your parents across the rest of your lifetime, which is less than the total amount of days you spent with your parents during one individual calendar year before you moved out.

And despite not being near the end of your own life, you may well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. And when mapped out in this diagram by Wait But Why, it becomes starkly clear how much time you have left with your parents compared to the time you had before you moved out:

Before moving out, the average person has used an average of 95% of their in-person parent time, and they're now in that final 5%.

But sadly, this doesn't just go with parents, it can be high school friends, siblings and other relatives too.

With all of your childhood friends leading different lives all in different places, it becomes even harder to create a group meet-up, therefore only hanging out for - let's say an average of - 10 days each decade compared to the almost daily hangouts you had when in school. You're in the final 7%.

The same goes for siblings, my sister is 4 years younger than me in which, and at this current moment in time I've spent 15 years living with her, but now that I've moved out, and see her for let's say an average of 15 days per year, I'll be at the tail end with only around 15% of our total 'hangout' time left.

Conclusion

The main things to take away from this are:

1) Spend time as much time as possible with the people that mean the most to you, priorities matter.

2) Try your best to see your family as much as possible, don't keep putting it off. You'll regret it.

3) Don't take your time with family for granted, quality time matters and if you're in the last 10% of the time you're going to spend with someone you love, keep that in the front of your mind and treat the time as what it is, precious. 

I'm sorry this was somewhat depressing, but it's for sure better to know than it is to not. Therefore, you can make the most of the time you have left with the ones closest to you knowing how little you're going to see them in the coming years. I hope this has as much of an effect on you as it did me.

Make your time count and make sure to tell your family you love them when you get the chance :)