No, that isn’t how they say YOLO in Asia.
It means You Only Race Once and I thought of it in Ecuador three years ago today as a reason not to go to sleep. I said it to myself for the whole rest of my Race. (I was also probably not the first person to come up with this. It’s just that no one ever said it to me before it came to my head)
There were four teams living in the same house that month and each of us was serving with a different ministry. This particular Saturday night, my team was about to go to sleep because we needed to be at church at 7:30am.
But then a few people started talking about going into town to celebrate our host’s birthday. It was 10pm. Who knew how late we would be out.
Most of our team immediately said no way, it’s late, we’ll be exhausted tomorrow, good for Gustavo but no. Me and Dillon deliberated for a while, and finally since I don’t like to sleep and I love people and never said no to a chance to be around them, I said “YALL. Yes I’ll regret this in the morning, but a year from now I’ll regret not going. We only get to do this once.” Dillon is an introvert and loves to sleep, but he’s a good tourist, so he came along too. We piled into a van and went to a really loud restaurant and had the best time and we got home just after 3am. Then got up three hours later.
We were indeed exhausted the next morning. It was slightly awful and we laughed about it a lot. But guess what? Every September since then, when this picture pops up in my Facebook memories,
I don’t think about how I could barely stand up at the bus stop the next morning. I think about the best quesadilla I’ve ever tasted, and about how pretty the city looked at night, and about how much I miss Gustavo and how happy he was to be celebrated…and then I think about the incredible nap I took after church the next day. We had beds that month.
Then there were all the nights that I stayed up a little later to journal, and I thought about just going to sleep and forgetting about it. Now when I reread them, I’m so thankful for the sleep I gave up so that I could have all these memories…and I’m so sad about the months in Asia when I did choose sleep over writing, because I forget so much more than I thought I would.
So future Racers(and current ones because it’s never too late), when you want to go do all the things but also want to be sensible, don’t ask yourself if you’ll regret it the next day(because the answer is often yes). Ask yourself if it’ll hurt your ministry, and if it won’t then think about how you’ll feel in a year, when you’re back in boring America thinking about today. Will you wish you’d done all the things? Will you look at your squadmates’ photos who did the things and kick yourself for not joining?
Sleep, laundry, and the internet(most especially the internet) can all wait. None of them are worth missing a moment that you can never have anywhere else.
So dance in the bus station instead of sleeping on a bench.
Play frisbee with the kids next door instead of snagging ten minutes of alone time.
Play Wii Sports with your host family instead of scrolling Facebook(that’ll just make you homesick anyway).
Walk a mile to see the sunset when you’d rather just nap until dinner.
Skip sleeping in and go for a run by the Indian Ocean.
Spend one of your off days with your ministry host. It might be your favorite.
Stay out til midnight on New Years even if you have a long bus ride the next day.
Jump in the lake even though it’s 50 degrees.
Your Race will end someday. I know right now it feels like eternity, in either a good way or not so much, but it will end and you’ll wish you could have it back. Soak it up. Live this life while you have it because eleven months is just not very long.
