A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to go to one of my bucket-list destinations, Reykjavik, in Iceland. Home to the beautiful Northern Lights, the Blue Lagoon and lots of natural springs, geysers, and waterfalls.

I went in December. And I have to say, Iceland in the winter is beautiful.

Despite being bloody cold (and then some!), it has some of the most natural beauty I’ve ever seen.

But a new experience for me was seeing the sunrise and sunset, every day!

The sun came up around 11:30am, and set around 3:30pm.

There were four hours of daylight, that’s all.

FOUR HOURS.

Can you imagine?

It was surreal. There were lots of things we had to pack into those four hours, which we wouldn’t have been able to do in the evening.

Some things we just had to scrap — as we simply could not fit it in. We got hyper efficient in terms of what we would prioritise. What were musts? What were we happy to miss?

During those four hours, we also had to prepare for the evening where we knew we wouldn’t be able to venture out willy-nilly — i.e. to get supplies or food, if we needed it.

It needed efficient planning and urgency in our approach, to make sure we made the most of those precious daylight hours and not to waste a single second.

Everything shut down as soon as it got dark — as with the darkness, came the bitter, extreme cold. Those four hours were full of life, and yet come sunset — it became a ghost town.

It made me realise a profound lesson we can learn from this is to think of those four hours of daylight as our lives.

It is extremely short, in comparison to the time of darkness that we will experience in our graves. Are we really making the most of our daylight?

What preparation are you doing for the upcoming darkness, your grave and after life?

And how best will YOU utilise your daylight?