Enough with the "precious hours" metrics

When I was in high school, I saw a video that did some back-of-the-napkin math for the average number of hours an average person lives, represented with jelly beans. (You can almost hear the creator thinking "Hm... how can I put this in a way the people would understand?") Then, subtract the hours spent sleeping. Or working. Or at school. And then the obvious question is posed: what will you do with this oh-so-precious time you have left?

Maybe it was original at the time, I don't know. It's my first memory of encountering this sort of thing— though I'm sure it's existed in various forms for a long time, and a snappy YouTube video was simply the newest, sleekest iteration.

Well, one thing's for sure: this shit sure as hell is not original anymore. When I first watched that video, my reaction probably fell somewhere around: gut-punch emotional response, instant worry about whether I'll end up spending my life well, and perhaps some inspiration to make conscious choices throughout my life, never wasting the precious seconds given to me.

I'm not 16 anymore, and I no longer have any appreciation for these sophomoric life metrics. I'm acutely aware of my own mortality and the various hairpin turns my life will likely take as I get older. As you might know, I've been this way for a while, and I don't need any more positive reinforcement. (Someone please try to convince me that my time is less important and maybe I'll end up back in the middle.) What's more, the older I get the more I realize that my experience is more common than I always thought. Many— most?— people experience existential stress and face difficult decisions about how to reconcile the image of their ideal life with the facts of reality: trading time and energy for financial freedom, and hopefully enjoying it a little along the way.

My opinion on these "oh my god your heart beats 96 billion times during your life and every beat is one. step. closer. to. death." illustrations is similar to my opinion about news stories on the latest climate catastrophe. The people who give a shit have been giving a shit for a long time now and have already changed their behavior accordingly, and the people who don't care will either avoid this information or feel no effect from it. Who's really going to make a drastic life change for the better because they saw a video of their life as 5 million M&Ms and panicked? And for the people who are affected by this content: do they really need the additional stress?

Lucky for y'all, I can answer proudly in the negative. We don't need these representations anymore. Please stop thinking of new ways to remind people of their mortality. It doesn't get them closer to living their dream life— it either freaks them out, or their eyes glaze over long before your message hits home.

And if you ever wondered the quickest way to throw people into a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life spiral, the consensus is clear: tell them about the accomplishments of a famous person by the time s/he was their age. If the heartbeat time bomb wasn't bad enough, it's sometimes accompanied by a timeline showing that Newton invented calculus at age 27, or that Einstein came up with the theory of relativity at age 26. (Didn't bother checking either of those numbers because it doesn't matter.) To drive this home, today my brother told me the following anecdote: Julius Caesar, 32 years old, reading about the accomplishments of Alexander the Great by the time he was Caesar's age, broke down crying. This was around 2000 years ago. Obviously, existential self-doubt and comparison-driven insecurity are not a new part of the human experience. They've long been the "salt to taste" in the stew of a personal crisis.

So what's a better way to live, or to think about living? I agree with the point of these life-metrics— namely, that time is precious and it's difficult to remember that while going through your everyday life— but the angle of attack is all wrong. Writing down something you accomplished every day, or planning your life down to the minute so you can optimize productivity, or any similar approach is just going to cause stress, burnout, and then more stress. I think a more Zen approach is in order: be present, as much as possible. Be present while washing your dishes, be present while working out, be present while doing your favorite activity. There's no sense of punishment if you lose focus for a while; just pick it back up where you left off. (Take it from someone who's bad at this and trying to get better.) I believe that you can live a fulfilling, meaningful life even if you never travel the world, see the northern lights (not gonna stop me from trying though), or invent an entire new branch of mathematics. It's a balance between not being complacent in your life and decisions, and not running in overdrive out of fear you're falling behind.

To cherry pick a few lines from one of my favorite poems:

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

and

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

And from one of my other favorites:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Don't count the seconds, or heartbeats, or whatever your metric of choice may be. Do what you can to appreciate where you are, not losing sight of where you're headed but with an understanding that there will be some detours. It'll be okay.

That's my advice for myself, at least.