Life is short? No it isn't! (1 Viewer)

[Gary->dee]

Whenever someone around me utters the all-too familiar words "Life is [too] short" I make it a point to correct them. No it isn't. Life isn't short. It's a very long process that can take many long years.

Sure life is short if you have cancer or aids or some other life threatening disease, but more often than not when those words "Life is short" are said it's usually not in the company of someone on the verge of death. Ok granted we never know when we'll buy it due to unseen and unpredictable events such as car accidents, airplane crashes, lightning strikes, assassinations, drug overdoses or whatever, but those things are few and far inbetween. Besides that, people can survive those things.

Usually those cliched words are said in order to motivate someone or people in general. Life is short, move your ass! In that case I'd give it some credit, but not much. Might as well say "The world is going to explode" or "You never know when a huge meteor will destroy earth" or "Move your ass!" in order to motivate someone. "Life is short" seems like a half-truth or a flat-out lie. Perhaps in hindsight when someone is 75 years-old they can say "Life is short" but anyone under 40 shouldn't really be allowed to say that should they? :p)

Anyway I guess my point is that it almost makes me mad when someone says "Life is short" because unless you're on your deathbed, it isn't.

What do you folks think of this?

 

[Jim_F]

Gotta disagree. 75 years is a long time compared to the lifespan of a fruit fly, but it's less than an eye blink compared to most of what's around us.
TTYL
(if there's time)

 

[Jim Sit]

Well Gary, I would ask how old you are? I can remember feeling like you do, but as I get older, years seem to go by much more quickly than they did when I was younger (and I'm "only" 33).

I found this to be even more true after we had children.

As a teenager, a year seemed like forever. Now I feel like I blink my eyes and a year has passed. All of the sudden, life starts to feel shorter. I do use that phrase, and truly believe it's true.

 

[Gary->dee]

But in what context do you use the phrase? Is it to convey the feeling of lost opportunities? The appreciation of life in general? I just don't think I could ever use the phrase unless I know I'll be dying within the next year or so. Other than that I'd feel like I was lying.

 

[Jim_F]

Naw, the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall are relatively brand spanking new. We're going to miss infinitely more than we're ever going to see.

Now death, that lasts a while...

 

[Jeff Pryor]

Ask anyone on their deathbed and they'll all tell you that life IS short. It's no cliche.

 

[John Watson]

Didn't Woody Allen use that joke somewhere?

"Life is so short!

And so miserable"


as a variation of "the food here is so bad, and the portions are so small"


Oddly, life may be too short for some people to do what they are supposed to do. (Living lives of noisy desperation, and all that jazz.)

 

[MarkHastings]

I think the phrase "Life is too short" is missused. It seems that we say that phrase when it feel like we don't have a lot of years left to live. You don't hear too many young people saying "Life's too short" because they have many years ahead of them.

So I don't think it's "Our entire life is too short", it's more like "The life we have left to live, is getting too short".

 

[MarkHastings]

Well, not to get too philisophical, but humans are the only animals who don't live in the moment. Animals (like dogs and cats) live for the moment and never think about the past or future. This is how they can be so happy with the few years they have to live. We humans tend to evaluate our lives and futures constantly, it's this constant evaluation (for someone in their 40's) that makes it seem like the past 40 years may have been wasted instead of thinking that the past 40 years were spent well.

We tend to dismiss large portions of our life due to things like bad relationships, or rough times in our life, etc. Once you've blocked out these episodes, you don't have much to add up to what you may consider a "good life" and it seems like you haven't accomplished much over the years.

Instead, see each bad episode as a learning experience (i.e. as something good) and you will soon see how much of life you've already lived and how much is still ahead of you.

---sorry about the philosophical journey there, but life's too short to be worried about life being too short.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Actually, to me, "Life is short" is more like "Don't procrastinate and let opportunities pass you by."

 

[Bob Graz]

It does seem that the older you get the faster time goes. I think when you're younger and through raising kids you tend to measure time by the day. Every day something new or different is happening. Once you get by that, change doesn't seem to occur daily so you start looking at time by weeks or months. Now that my kids are nearly all in college, or almost finished with undergrad, my time horizon is much longer. I think in terms of what will be different in 3 months or 6 months or next year. I think that makes time seem to go faster. Not as many milestone posts. Ok, that's as deep as I care to go. Back to the how to get rid of ants thread.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I've never seen 'life is short' used on it's own. It's usually 'life's too short for this' or 'life's too short for that'.

The main point however, is that that life is NOT 75 years. Life is just how long you last and that could be 100 years, 40 years or 10 years. The point of the phrase is that life is too short to arse about because you might not be here this time next year.

I know one thing for certain though - life's certainly too short for wasting time analysing crap like this.

 

[John Watson]

For those who haven't got the time - CARPE DIEM

 

[Joe Schwartz]

Life is too short to waste your time getting upset over stuff like that.

 

[Patrick_S]

That's the first thing that I thought of after reading the original post.

 

[MarkHastings]

It all has to do with your metabolism. They say that when you get older, your metabolism slows down and days seem to go by quicker when you're slowing down (i.e. getting older) than when you're metabolism is higher (i.e. when you're young) and the days seem to go by slower.

It's all a matter of perception.

 

[John Watson]

Mark, maybe it seems it's going faster, 'cause after a certain age, we're running downhill.

 

[Mike Lenthol]

Remember how boring and lazy summers off from school were? Welcome to 2 decades of retirement

 

[ChrisMatson]

Life is short! There will never be enough time to read all the books I want to read, see all the movies I want to see, travel to all the places I want to go, show my wife how much I lover her, and so on...

People often say they don't regret things that they did, they regret the things they didn't do. I try to live for the moment, but life gets in the way. There are little things like school, work, bills, ability and sleep that sometimes hold me back from doing all that I want. I just try to make up for it when I can.

 

[nolesrule]

It is a matter of perception, but I doubt it's metabolic. It's more psychological, relative to the total amount of time experienced.

The older you get, the shorter a unit of time such as a day, week, month or year feels because you have experienced more of them.

When you are 5 years old, 1 year makes up 20% of your life, and seems like a very long time. When you are 50, 1 year is only 2%, and seems shorter because of this.