Worth Our Time

By Maria Shriver
July 04, 2026

I've Been Thinking...

Listen to this article.

0:00

/866.375147

How are you on this Sunday of this holiday weekend? And where do I find you on this fine day?

At least, I hope it’s a fine day for you, but I know that’s presumptuous to assume. Maybe your Fourth of July was everything you hoped it would be, or maybe it fell short. Maybe people got into an argument at your table, or maybe someone you counted on seeing at the barbecue didn't show up. Maybe you ate too much and felt sluggish. Maybe you're traveling and at your wit's end.

Or maybe you’re just like everyone I speak to lately. Simply exhausted. Exhausted by the news. By social media. By politics. By mounting bills. By influencers telling you how to be more productive, how to live longer, how to do more and do less simultaneously.

I feel you. I get it.

Every week here at The Sunday Paper, we ask ourselves: What stories can we report that will inspire you? What stories will lift you up or brighten your day? What can we share that will help you make sense of everything swirling around in the zeitgeist? What will help you live a more meaningful life? What will help you, and humanity, move forward?

We certainly don't want to add to the noise or your exhaustion. We want to add to your serenity. We want to inform, not inflame. We want our content to be worth your time. (And, by the way, if you feel that something hasn’t been worth your time, we hope you’ll tell us.)

Who and what is really worth your time these days? That is one of the most fundamental questions you can ask yourself right now—and only you can answer it. (One thing that was definitely worth my time was watching America’s victory in the World Cup at the start of the holiday weekend. For sure, I’ll be tuning in tomorrow night to cheer them on again!)

With the Fourth of July behind us and summer well underway, this is a good moment to ask: Are you happy with how you're walking through your life? Are you content with your weekly schedule, or does it fill you with dread? Does your email inbox give you anxiety, or do you like what's landing there each day?

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. They're exhausting too. Make one, and then comes another. I imagine that's how the Supreme Court justices feel most days. One decision after another, each one having a rippling effect through millions of lives.

So how do we build lives of meaning? How do we shape lives we're proud of? How do we simplify, streamline, and shed what no longer serves us? Those are the questions and those are the words I've been sitting with this summer.

The other day I came across something Bob Dylan said in an interview about life at eighty that stopped me cold. He said: "You're haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would."

Think about that. Let it sink in. How little of it really mattered.

This summer I've been looking deep within at what actually matters. And the first thing I had to do—something I have never been good at—was acknowledge that I am just as exhausted as everyone else. Yup, I am.

You may remember I hired a leadership coach a while back. My intention in doing so was to become better at making decisions, managing my time, and leading from a place of abundance instead of feeling frazzled all the time.

A few weeks ago, my coach told me something that has stayed with me. He said that when leaders, parents, or anyone responsible for a family tells him they're exhausted, the root cause is often that they haven't given themselves credit for what they've actually done. That, or they haven't allowed the credit others assign to them to penetrate. To make his point, he asked me about my own children. "Do you take credit for who they've become?"

"Well, no. Not really,” I said. “They just came out that way. They came from God like that. And they have worked hard at becoming the people they are. I can't take credit for another human being becoming who they are."

He responded: “That answer denies your involvement, your contribution, your effort, and your parenting. You are denying yourself, and that is exhausting.”

Ouch. He was right. I minimize my own contributions and empty my own bucket before anyone else gets a chance to fill it. It's an old, learned pattern. And it doesn't serve me. I need to shed it and I’m sure this feeling is familiar to you too, and trust me: I’ll bet it isn’t serving you either.

My coach’s homework was simple. Every day, acknowledge yourself. Give yourself grace. (That’s a good reminder since my word of the year was “grace.”) Tell yourself something you've done well. Allow someone to say something kind to you and, instead of swatting it away, let it land. Fill your own bucket for a few minutes, because life drains it constantly. Someone has to refill it, and that someone has to be you.

Once I actually acknowledged the exhaustion, I had to look at my plate honestly and ask: What's on here that only I can do? What can be cleared off? What can I let go of, and what deserves the room that frees up? I've been developing a decision tree to help guide me that starts not with a task, but with an intention.

My intention is this: I want to live a serene, streamlined, meaningful life. I want the people I care about to feel my love. I want them to feel that I have time for them, and I want my words to match my actions. I don't want them to feel my exhaustion.

There's a second filter I've added to my life as well, and it's become the sharpest one. What can only I do?

A lot of things in my life are good and meaningful, but other people could do them. What I'm trying to drill down to is which work has my fingerprints on it specifically. Only I can build the kind of relationship with my grandchildren where they truly know me—not just know of me. Only I can hold a particular place in the hearts of my closest friends. I want to keep showing up for that, even when they have plenty of other people in their lives.

Also, only I can write this column. You can read wonderful columns from countless writers, but this one has my name on it, my perspective, and my journalistic approach. That is something only I can offer. That filter changes everything. It's how I decide where my time actually belongs.

This new filter on life is what prompted me to schedule a standing weekly dinner with my brother Bobby that’s just the two of us. It's also what pushed me to join the weekly mahjong game with my daughters and their friends. It's what sent me to Minneapolis for the Special Olympics. I knew it would matter to my brother Timothy (who runs it), to my parents in heaven, and to my own heart to be there. It's what takes me back to Hyannisport every August to spend time with my other brothers and cousins.

This week I head to London for the largest global Alzheimer's conference. Finding a cure matters to me deeply. Talking about women's brain health, funding research, and encouraging women to understand their own health journeys is a mission I've been on for 25 years, and it’s one that I will not complete in my lifetime. Still, it matters profoundly to me. It also matters to my daughters' generation, my granddaughters' generation, and to billions of women yet to come.

These are the things that have made the cut of where I want to spend my time. I also want to spend more one-on-one time with my children, my grandchildren, and my friends.

What else matters to me? My faith. My country. My health, which requires me to slow down enough to protect it. And most importantly, the people I love. I want to spend more one-on-one time with my children, my grandchildren, and my friends. When I look at my life today, I must also acknowledge that there are several people in it today who weren’t even alive six years ago! That’s amazing. And now I also have a daughter-in-law and son-in-law that I’m focused on. So, life evolves. It changes. New people come in, while others go. That’s why our time is of the essence.

Susan Cain writes in today's Sunday Paper about taking the time to notice the everyday things—the small, insignificant, very significant things. BK Fulton writes today that what matters to him is staying in the American experiment: unfinished but inspiring.

I don't want to get to eighty and feel haunted the way Bob Dylan described. I don’t want to look back and realize I focused on things that mattered much less than I thought they did. I don't want to discover that the people I love most never felt my love or never felt that I had time for them.

I look at every decision through this prism now. I look at every piece of content this paper publishes through it too. Will this help somebody spiritually and emotionally? Is it worth their time? And, if you are a paying subscriber (thank you to those of you who are—really, thank you), are we truly giving you something worthy of that investment?

I believe that most of what we publish here passes that test. Most of the people who write for this publication want the same thing: to get at the truth, to make lives better, to share hard-won lessons, and ultimately to help someone feel less alone. They are service journalists. They do it because they see important stories hiding in plain sight. They do it because, at some point in their own lives, they felt unseen, and they remember what that cost them.

So if you are feeling exhausted today, I get it. Breathe with me. If you cannot read one more thing or sign up for one more obligation, I get that too. It's okay for you simply to be today, whether it’s a beautiful day or a not-so-fine day for you. You get to call it whatever it is.

I hope you can take a moment to remember some of what we've talked about together this summer. Filling your own bucket. Finding your assignment. Reaching across divides. Making connections. Calling old friends, finding new ones, telling the people you love that you love them. Admitting you might be tired, or lonely, or scared, or struggling. Asking for forgiveness when you need to. None of this means you're weak. It simply means you're human.

And also take a moment today to ask yourself what’s on your plate that only you can do. What's on there that someone else could carry instead? Name one thing this week you could let go of, and one person you could give that time to in its place. Start there.

Your time is your most precious resource, right up there with your love. And I have come to believe the two are deeply connected. So spend your time wisely on the people and the work that only you can give yourself to. Those are the things that will matter most at eighty. Because they’re what matter most at every decade. That I know for sure.