[Originally offered
as "Can You Afford the Time to Read This? Can You Afford Not To."
By request, I offer these two pieces as a whole. Those who find this approach
to life soul-resonating may find Part 3, "Lifetime Asymmetry"
of like value.]
How old are you? Me? I’m
58, be 59 in 3 weeks.
Convert your age into
months. Me? 696 months and 3 weeks.
The average lifespan of
the adult male in the US is 74.8 years, for women it is 76.3.
That’s 897 months and 912
months respectively.
The average human
lifespan is less than 1,000 months.
[And that’s assuming we
make it that long. There Are NO Guarantees.]
If you are a male and are
38 years old or older, you have already used up over half of your average lifespan
reserve.
39 or older if you are
female.
Subtract your current
lived months from your average lifespan months to get your lifespan reserve.
Me? That’s 201 months
remaining.
You have slept for an approximate
1/3rd of your life.
You will continue to do
so.
Subtract 1/3rd
from your reserve.
For me that leaves 134
awake months in my lifespan reserve.
For most of us work,
paying bills, trips to the store, traffic, scrolling your phone, downtime for
flu, watching TV, etc. take up another approximate 1/3rd of our
lives, so subtract an additional 1/3rd from your remaining reserve.
For me? Well, that drops
it to 67 months.
67 months presumably free
and clear to pursue aspirations, dreams, goals, hone skills, take up new
hobbies, go on new adventures etc.
Keep in mind that 67 months
is 5 ½ years.
That’s it.
Do your own calculation
from months to years and see how much “free lifetime” is left to you.
And keep in mind these
years at the latter half of life are statistically less mobile, less agile,
less able as we all fight against the inevitability of entropy.
So, if we calculate it in
“free lifetime” alone, me with my 5 ½ years and you with your own “End Date”,
ask yourself…
·
Are you using these end times well?
·
Are you squeezing all the juice out of
what ya got while ya can?
·
Drinking life to the dregs?
·
Catching all the sunrises, sunsets, moon-viewings,
flower smellin’s, cat pettin’, dog hugging, loving and kissing that you can?
·
Or…
·
Are you running out the clock pretending
that the Mathematics of Mortality do not apply to you?
I wish nothing but long
healthy happy lives for all, but…we all know that is an impossibility in many
cases, perhaps our own.
What we do have control
over is the right here, the right now. And then the moment after that.
And then the next. It is
these moments that make up our remaining months.
Fill them bright and pure,
Brothers & Sisters!
Now, I know some of you will
find this all dire as hell, others inspiring as hell.
Either way, the math is
the math.
Embrace the facts and GO!
HOW TO DOUBLE YOUR LIFETIME RESERVE: Life Reserve Addendum
For those who were/are depressed by the Life Reserve
Mathematics.
I offer that “Memento Mori” [“Remember you must die”]
is a lop-sided equation.
It is the stick in a carrot-and-stick spur to
betterment.
The carrot that is the obverse of memento mori, which
is [to my mind] the more powerful and useful is “Memento vivere!” [“Remember you
must live!”]
·
Do not let lifetime reserve daunt you.
·
Use the mathematics to say, “Oh, I better
get on the stick!”
·
Ask of everything, “Is binge watching
Karate Kid the best use of my life?”
·
“Is this meme-sharing, fist-shaking,
phone-scrollin’, traffic fuming getting me to Happy with a capital H?”
·
Memento vivere! Asks us to Wake Up to the
Facts of Mortality.
·
Sniff each moment for the gift it is.
·
Those who can grasp that “Be. Here. Now.
Appreciate. The. Now.” Double their Lifetime Reserve.
How is that possible?
The 1/3rd of life that is not free time the
3rd devoted to work, traffic, trips to the store can become
additional moments of “Live in the Moment.”
When the Missus was facing down the barrel of the
brain tumor gun, we sat in traffic on stormy rainy winter days headed for
Vanderbilt Hospital for more treatment. The worry always lay hard in the pit of
the stomach, yet I would look over at her and she at me and this traffic was
yet one more moment she was right here—alive and I was right there with her.
If I didn’t have her, I would kick and scream and cry
for those moments in traffic, those times “stuck” in line at a store.
So, yes, memento mori, we will die—all of us—some of us sooner than the expected reserve. If not you, someone you love.
This is not a warning; it is an inevitability.
It is the fact of life, the fact of death.
But…
Memento vivere!
Grab it, squeeze it, hug it, use it NOW!
Your Freetime Lifetime Reserve + your 1/3rd
Duty Time can double your Lifetime Reserve but…
Only if you use it. Only if you are alive and awake to
it.
Only if you live honestly.
Let us allow the polymathic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe express why we should weight the other side of the equation.
“Memento mori! Enough of that,
I’d rather not repeat it;
In the flight of life, why should I
Torture you with its limits?
Therefore, like an old curmudgeon,
I recommend to you, docendo, [Teach by example]
My dear friend, in your own way,
Just memento vivere!"
Lifetime Mathematics requires balance in the equation.
Scare the hell outta yourself with memento mori, now
get giddy as F with memento vivere!
All the best my Brothers & Sisters!
Now go Live and docendo to others by your glorious
example!
Mabitsiar’u!
Resources for Livin’ the
Warrior Life, Not Just Readin’ About It
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast
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