Life is Too Short!
On average, human beings live for 66 years. If you sleep an average of 8 hours a day, you lose 1/3 of your life to inactivity. That is about 22 years. More if you sleep longer than 8 hours. But I don’t want to bother much about rest, one won’t get to a ripe old age without it. Its what you do with the remaining 44 years of your waking hours that matters provided that you have 44 years of it to live. Oh one more thing, there’s a good chance that as you read this article, you’ve already spent a good amount of that 44 years. How you spent it and how you will spend it in the future is the topic of this discourse.
If you spend an average 2 hours of each day angry or sad, you lose 3.33 years to sadness which leaves you with a little more than 40 years. That is again provided that you have that amount of time in this world. If you spend some amount each day resenting other people, regretting wrong decisions worrying about your prospects are you really using your time wisely?
As I said, life is too short. For all we know we could leave this world tomorrow or in the next 50 years or so. This is something that is completely out of our control, so why worry about it? When we experience failure in our lives, it is nothing more than a twist in our progressing life story. Its a decision point for its main character, you to make it a tragedy or an action adventure story. Happy ending or sad ending, it doesn’t matter. Endings are just endings, its when everybody goes home. You have the rest of your life to be more excited about.
So, what am I saying here? Am I saying that we should all be slap happy, optimistic individuals who pretend that all is well in this world? That we all go into denial when bad things happen to us? Of course not, I am quite as familiar with bad experience as everyone else. My future dimmed when I got my girlfriend pregnant at age 19, I struggled in the 13 years that followed, my first wife left me at age 26, I felt my life shattered. I lost a very important person in my life on my 32nd birthday while my daughter was seriously ill and yes I lost my job and were broke and up to my eyeballs in debt at that relatively young age. I’ve gone to hell and back and what did I learn? I learned to cut my loses. I learned that staying down when one falls will get one nowhere. I’m quite a clumsy person not only physically but also in terms of my decisions. I faced dead ends several times in my life and failed countless times. I have encountered so many of them that I’ve learned to deal with them. I learned that if one falls one should get up as soon as he can, shake the dust off, and move on. When faced with a wall, turn your back to it and yes, move on to find a better path.
A boxer who accepts his defeat, learns from it and then challenges his opponent with a new resolve and stronger determination have a 50/50 chance of winning. 50%! That’s so much better than zero!
Think about it. Think about how smartly you are spending your precious little time in this world. Smart is not about worrying about failures or the prospects of it, Its about how well we fight knowing fully well that we have half a chance of failing but not worrying about it. The worst thing that can happen is to lose everything but hey, who doesn’t? Don’t we all lose everything in the end? So why bother?
Live life, smell the roses, appreciate the people around you, have fun dealing with what life throws at you, take the good with the bad, stop being angry or resentful and most of all, stop worrying about what tomorrow will bring. Life is too short for that.
