one day or day one?
thinking about how easy it is to wait… and what happens when you don’t
A friend told me a story recently that I haven’t stopped thinking about.
They were at an art gallery, sitting on a bench, when they noticed two men talking. One looked exactly like your typical finance executive on Wall Street. Clean cut, structured, probably had somewhere else to be. The other looked like art itself. Paint on his shirt. A little older. Free-spirited.
They were both looking at the same art piece, but they were living completely different lives and at some point after discussing the painting together, the finance guy asked, “What do you do for a living?” And the other man said, “Well, I surf around the world. I pick up work here and there. I just do what I love.”
He didn’t need much. A small apartment in a different country. Enough work to sustain his lifestyle and a life built around actually feeling alive.
The finance guy, on the other hand, had everything you’re supposed to want. A stable career. Structure. Responsibility.
But the conversation shifted.
They started talking about travel. The artsy man had this long list of places he’s surfed in, some i’d never even heard of, and the finance guy kept saying he always wanted to go there one day.
and then the artsy man just looked at him and said, “well… why don’t you?”
That’s the part that stuck with me and I think that’s the question most of us avoid answering, not because we don’t want a certain lifestyle, but because we’re used to waiting for the right time to live it.
And not because one life is better than the other, but it reveals something we don’t talk about enough.
There’s a default blueprint many of us follow. Go to college. Get a stable job. Build a career. Stay in one place. Work your way up. Maybe travel when you can, or later on.
It’s not wrong. It works for a lot of people.
But it’s also passed down through expectations, environments, and what we’ve been shown is “normal.”
So what happens when “normal” gets disrupted on a large scale?
A version of this dream has started to shift in today’s economy. With everything happening, layoffs, AI, all of it, people are starting to question what they actually want out of their lives.
And I don’t think the problem is that this path exists.
I think the problem is how rarely we stop to question how it fits into the lives we want to live.
What really stayed with me about that story wasn’t the lifestyle itself. It was the difference between “wanting” and “doing.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there.” “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
We say those things so casually, but over time, they quietly become a list of experiences we never actually give ourselves permission to have.
If we’re being honest, how many of those things have you actually made time for this year? (Don’t worry if the answer isn’t much, there’s still time.)
The biggest difference between those two men wasn’t ambition. It was definition. One built a life around stability, responsibility, and providing. The other built a life around freedom, experience, and doing what he loved.
And both required trade-offs, just different ones.
It’s also easy to judge the more structured life and to look at someone working late or busy all the time and assume they’re doing it wrong. But a lot of the time, there are real responsibilities behind that. Things they care about, people they’re showing up for, or choices they’ve made for a reason.
I’m sharing the contrast because it’s hard to ignore, not because one life is better than the other. There’s no right or wrong, just what feels right for you.
But we don’t need to change our entire lives to start. Most of the time, it’s just about stopping the habit of pushing everything to “one day”.
It’s about being honest about the life you’re actually building and making small adjustments to make it feel more like you.
I also think what this story really unlocked for me is how limited our thinking can become without us even realizing it. We assume life has to look a certain way because it’s the version we see most often, but there are people living entirely different realities.
And on a smaller scale, sometimes it’s as simple as switching your routine, going to the game you’ve been thinking about (even if you have to go alone), trying the class you’ve been saving for, or even just taking a walk, exploring a new neighborhood, and getting out of the house for an hour.
It’s easy to compare one life to the next, especially on social media. But sometimes seeing someone live differently can actually spark something in you, a reminder that other ways of living are possible too.
At the same time, we’re all on our own timelines. No one is really ahead or behind, even if it might feel that way.
So what are you actually choosing?
This isn’t about quitting your job or moving across the world tomorrow. I wanted to write this just for awareness and because the story personally resonated with me.
Because it’s really easy to wake up one day and realize you built a life based on what made sense on paper, but not what actually mattered to you. And those aren’t always the same thing.
I’m saying this as someone who’s had to check myself on this too.
I know there’s a lot going on and life can be complicated in ways that are real. But it also doesn’t have to be this huge life change like social media makes it feel (unless that’s what you want).
Most of the time, it’s just something you’ve been thinking about that you finally decide to go do.
If I had kept waiting for the right time, the right person to go with, the right moment, I would have missed the Yankees breaking their homerun record. I would have missed meeting Jalen Hurts. I would have missed watching VJ Edgecombe play during his rookie season.
I would have missed the very things that fill this sports scrapbook.
None of those moments came from waiting. They came from just going.
So, who do you see yourself more in? The one who keeps saying “one day” or the one who just went?
I know for me, I’ve been both.
Thank you for sharing this story with us. It’s incredible how two people can be in the same place, looking at the exact same thing, yet experiencing it through completely different lives and perspectives. There’s something really poetic about that. 💕