On the Finite Nature of Life and How It’s OK

We wake up and go to work. We eat 3 meals a day give or take. Sometimes we meet friends, sometimes we don’t. We fall in love occasionally losing it. We laugh, we cry. We celebrate one birthday after another wondering where all the time had gone and desperately searching for the things we’d learned or achieved in the span of that year only to find breadcrumbs. The candles start to stack up and we’re reminded of our finite nature as we’re congratulated by newer labels each year. Happy quarter century, happy new decade, happy half point to thirties. We never get any younger and soon enough we’ll have to contend with not being young anymore. All those slogans of youth and adventure are now used for a time that everyone knows is gone but nobody’s willing to say out loud. Life goes on.

On my 25th birthday, I wanted to reflect a little bit on what we spend our lives doing. You’ve probably seen these numbers before but I think it’s nice to remind ourselves again just in case:

We spend 1/3 of our entire lives sleeping,

We’re working for an average of 10 years,

We spend 70% of our entire waking life interacting with some kind of digital media,

We spend more than 3 years simply eating,

We’re in traffic for around 3 months,

We’re in the bathroom for a full 1.5 years,

We spend 90% of our time indoors.

Wow. Granted a lot of these numbers would fluctuate from person to person but it’s still kinda scary to think that these are an average for people in this day and age. It makes you almost want to stop reading this stupid story (it’s not that bad) and actually do something meaningful with your life. Shift your priorities, come up with a new schedule, demand more of yourself, stop settling for less, cut out all the unnecessary chaff from what should be your one and only life. Now if you can actually do all that, you’re amazing. Before that though let’s reflect on some things. Sure, a lot of your life goes into all these mundane things. They’re a bit hard to avoid. But beyond that, a lot of your life has already gone into periods where the only proper way to describe them would be “hiatus”. A time, but most likely times, where you weren’t really doing anything. Sure you were doing “something” like studying or working but you know what I mean. You felt empty and your entire life had broken down into the ever present routine. You call up your friends because you want, you need to have that empty shell that your life has become to house something, anything. But that’s life. It’s OK not to have been involved in all those amazing activities and organizations back in school. It’s OK to have spent your weekends staying indoors while you could’ve joined that networking event. It’s OK to not always know where you’re gonna be in the future. There’s no real point in looking to the past or the future to reclaim your life. The only way to reclaim our lives is in the present.

But you know that, don’t you? You’ve always known that you had the power to change your life for the better, to be an adventurer, to be great. But you’ve gotten too used to postponing that ideal future. Or even if you do it, you’re plagued by so many doubts on whether you can succeed that you just feel like going back inside of yourself. And sometimes you do. But that’s OK. We’re all like that even if we don’t say it out loud. You can pick it up back again. But I also don’t want this particular story to be something that inspires you and makes you think “yeah, I’m going to change my life.” I wrote back in my first story, The Tyranny of Inspiration, that that kind of inspiration is only fleeting and temporary anyway. This story is only meant to remind that it’s up to you if you want your reflections on your birthdays or New Year’s Eves to not be so bittersweet. It’s up to you if you want the times of your life beyond sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom to be meaningful, fulfilling and joyful. I hope that you don’t get caught up on how you could’ve lived better. I hope you don’t get distracted because you need to blame yourself. I hope you take action. I hope you seize this day. I hope you become a little better every day.