People grow up with different visions in mind for what success looks like. Materialistic goals are shared; it’s hard to find someone not wanting to be the best looking, the richest, probably the smartest, etc. Our goals in life keep changing as a natural process of “growing up” and experiencing life changing events. For instance, more young people chasing fame and money, more old people tend to be targeting a good mental and physical health through religion and/or meditation. For a second, the one thinks that we are planning our lives as if we are going to live forever, but the older we get the more we realize that won’t be the case.

Elixir of Life

Yeah, sadly such a thing doesn’t exist. Saying that there’s 100% chance we are going to die is hard to picture; but visiting a grave and imagining ourselves there can help us quite a bit. So basically the question we can ask ourselves, where will I be in 100 years? The sad truth, certainly in a grave. So what matters if we are certain we will be in a grave in 100 years?

What Matters?

This post is not going to answer that as I cannot assert what matters for different people, but will rather help the reader answer it on their own. It’s hard to answer such a vague question, especially when we secretly hope that we will be special and live forever.

1 Hour

Let’s try to answer a much simpler question: what would matter if you are informed you have one hour to live? That’s probably much easier to answer. As a religious person, I would allocate some it it for spending time with the closest people and the other part for religious practices. So practically, what matters for me given the 1 hour constraint is family and religion. Something is sure, I will not spend it finishing that last piece of work.

Let’s increase the time frame gradually and let’s try to answer the same question.

1 Day

What about 1 day? Well, probably the same and also try to solve any legal issues beforehand if it’s a workday so my death won’t me more painful to the people I am leaving behind.

1 Month

Alright, what about 1 month? That’s definitely longer so I would include other things in the plan but the most likely I wouldn’t attempt to work or try to go shopping :)

1 Year

What about one year? Probably I don’t have enough savings for the full year and to leave some money behind, so limited amount of work should be there. So the answer is all of the above plus making some income for that duration and keep some good body shape. But again, it will be hard for me to just start consuming video games or movies again, I wouldn’t spend such limited time on that.

More?

So practically, given more time, the answer for me will be, all of the above plus something that would help me live comfortable life during this duration if it’s long enough. To put that into numbers, I am in my early thirties and if I make it to the average of my country, early seventies, then I will have 40 years. So there’s a chance it will be 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, 40 years or any duration between those. Given the uncertainty, it’s hard to plan our lives according to what’s left. So we attempt to keep a balance between preparation for death & trying to ensure a comfortable life during that duration.

Final Thoughts

It’s easier to picture death when looking at a grave. Also, it becomes possible to answer that question when given a finite time frame. The additional parameter here is uncertainty, for sure some of us will die within an hour, a day, … As a takeaway for me, my optimism bias (that I will somehow manage to live for eternity) prevents me from removing distractions and making most of life.