By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel in Chula Vista, California
A number of years ago, a sharp high school teacher in New York had a brilliant (and slightly terrifying) way of waking her students up. Every so often she’d scrawl something completely random on the board. One morning the kids walked in and saw a giant 25,550 staring back at them.
Finally, one brave soul raised his hand: “Uh… what’s that about?”
The teacher smiled and said, “That’s how many days you get if you live to 70.”
You could hear the collective gulp. Suddenly, 70 years didn’t sound like a nice long life — it sounded like a countdown on your phone battery at 3%.
And she was right. Put life in days instead of years, and it gets real, real fast. Sure, compared to a giant redwood or the Rocky Mountains, we’re basically mayflies. But even those mountains are newborns next to the age of the Earth. Time, as they say, is wildly relative — until it’s your time.
That’s why Judaism doesn’t just tell us to count time. It commands us to sanctify it.
Right now, between Passover and Shavuot, we’re in the middle of Sefirat HaOmer — the daily countdown. We count every single day out loud. Why? Because we only count what matters. You don’t count the pennies in your couch cushions, but you sure count the days until your wedding… or your next vacation… or, let’s be honest, your next Amazon delivery.
Sefira is God’s way of asking us every single evening: Nu? Did today count?
We live in the fastest-moving society in history. We obsess over saving time — two-minute delivery, speed scrolling, podcasts at 1.75x — yet we somehow still manage to waste it like pros.
I once read a piece that hit me like a truck. It said: If you’re around 35, after subtracting sleep, work, commuting, scrolling, eating, bathroom breaks, doctor visits, and all the other necessary nonsense… you’ve only got about 500 days left of truly free, usable life in the next 35 years.
Five hundred days. That’s it.
Here’s the classic breakdown (updated for 2026 vibes):
Sleep: ~23 years
Work (including the soul-crushing commute): ~16 years
Screens/TV/YouTube/Instagram doomscrolling: ~8–10 years (and rising)
Eating: 6 years
Travel/traffic: 6 years
“Just five more minutes” on the phone: probably another three.
Religion and real spiritual growth? In the original stats it was half a year. Half a year in an entire lifetime. Ouch.
We’re all geniuses at squandering the one resource we can never get back.
But here’s the good news — and the whole point of Parsha Emor and Sefira.
Judaism was the first to say: Holiness isn’t primarily about where you are — it’s about when you are. The very first thing God made holy in the Torah wasn’t a mountain or a building. It was a day — Shabbat.
You don’t have to become a tzaddik overnight. You don’t have to fix all your character flaws by next Thursday. You just have to improve today. Inch by inch. Little by little. One awkward, imperfect day at a time.
Missed yesterday? Cool. Today’s a new number in the Omer. Fresh start.
Every mitzvah you do, every time you hold your tongue, every act of patience or generosity, every moment you choose meaning over mindless scrolling — it reshapes your character. Slowly. Surely. Like compound interest for the soul.
So, as we count the Omer this year, let’s ask ourselves the real question:
Am I just passing time… or am I making time holy?
Because at the end of the journey, nobody’s going to wish they’d gotten better at binge-watching. They’re going to wish they’d spent a few more of those 25,550 days becoming the person their soul always knew they could be.
Let’s make these days count.
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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California