Our Existence Put In Perspective
"On the Shortness of Life"
As the title of Seneca's book On the Shortness of Life goes, "life is long if you know how to live it". When put into perspective, the length of our life on this planet can feel rather insignificant in terms of timespan. Some time ago I read Tim Urban's The Tail End, a famous essay on the shortness of life where the author represents an average life visually, using boxes. Breaking our time on Earth into life periods, months, weeks, days can help us become aware of how fast time goes by, and how short our existence is compared to Earth's history, "the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.” (Seneca, 65 A.D.). This paradigm is known as the tail end, as Tim Urban addresses the brief timespan most of us have left ahead of us. This recent, in-depth video on the subject by Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell* *dives into the concept of the tail end, reinforcing its validity and universal interest. Understanding the shortness of life may provoke two possible reactions that I experienced: a relief-like sensation akin to liberation, which is sparked by the infinite beauty of stepping out of our own involved constant life races; an underlying sense of urgency to focus on what one truly wants to pursue out of life, as opposed to falling prey to well-lit pathways leading to potentially unfulfilling scenarios.
While I found all of this a very intriguing meta-cognition exercise, there is also someone who built a Life Calendar (based on the concept of the tail end) for Notion as a simple yet powerful reminder of our monkey minds trapped in undisciplined continuous thinking. Stepping out of our way fosters awareness of the present moment, such a simple concept and yet an abnormal condition for our past and future-oriented minds. Every moment that passes by represents the past. The past serves us well as a learning tool to not repeat shortfalls again and again. The miracle of memory is that we can forget, not that we can remember (I recently heard this from dr. Jordan B. Peterson). The future is there to provide us with a direction in life, something for which to strive. The present moment is everything there is right now.
But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life