Life is long

People say life is short. Compared to what? Life is the longest thing you’ll ever do.

When you ask people what they mean by ‘life is short,’ they’ll sometimes say ‘It goes by quickly.’ But this is hard to make sense of. Life goes by at a speed of one second per second. Is that quick?

I think people say life is short because they replay their lives in their head and find that they quickly make it back to the present day. But this is a deficiency of our memories rather than life. It happens because we forget almost everything. If we remembered more, replaying our lives in our heads would take a long time. If we remembered absolutely everything, the replay would last as long as our lives have.

You might say life is short compared to the history of the universe. ‘Life is short’ would then be an analogue of ‘Earth is small.’ But are people much less likely to say life is short if they think that the world is only 6,000 years old ? Was there an uptick in ‘life is short’ proclamations every time the cosmologists decided the universe was older than previously thought?

You might say life is short compared to human history, but I find myself surprised in the opposite direction. Life is surprisingly long compared to human history. If Jesus Christ initiated a grand relay race, there’d only need to be about 25 handovers before the baton got to you. If you’re 30 years old, you’ve lived to see 1.5% of all the history between you and Jesus, and a full 7% of all the history between you and Shakespeare.

Life doesn’t feel short. It feels long. Sit quietly for two minutes and watch the time go by, then realize that your life has been many times longer than that. Five million times longer if you’re 20. Eight million times longer if you’re 30.