254 - is life long or short? 👶🧓
Hey there, !
This one's a bit underbaked, but I love to stick to my habits so I wanted to write something quick. Something I was meditating on:
Is it better to think life is long or life is short?
To me this is important, because it's one of those constraints that we have to design our lives. I know that we spend our whole lives learning how to live, and I've written about how we should be out experimenting and do things, but I also thought about the different approaches that might come about from playing the long game, or playing the short game.
A. Life is long...
...so you should be playing the long game in investing in yourself, the people around you, getting your finances in order, and preparing for things later on that you're going to have to worry about. Life expectancy these days is like 83 years in Australia, so the main thing that's going to get in the way of your plans is the uncertainty and randomness of the universe, and as such, you should be prepared for anything and everything that could happen to you. Save your money when you can, put your money into superannuation, stocks, property - whatever will help stretch your dollar even further into your twilight years. Reduce risk, invest in your health and exercise, make sure you can live a high quality life doing what you want for as long as you can.
Surround yourself with lots of friends (it increases your lifespan!), build great communities around you, make good decisions with your money, don't take risks that you can't shoulder - these are things that are going to really impact you in your later life if you don't put enough care into them.
Spend the time to find the right person if you want to be partnered up, and make sure that you're aligned on where you're going, all the way. You'd be trying to ensure that you guys set yourselves up for as long as possible and reduce the burden you have on the world and those around you.
Find something stable as your job - it doesn't have to be your passion, but it needs to earn. Money and survival are much more important to your future self, and whatever balance you're looking for in your work and life is so important. If your job is front of a computer, make sure you go out on your walks and try not to be sedentary (it decreases your lifespan!).
Essentially, since life is long, make sure you can live it all!
B. Life is short...
...so enjoy it while you can. Do what you want, make sure you live it the way you want to, right now, since you can never be sure if tomorrow will even come. Sure, life is expensive, and there's so much to do that requires money, but what's the point of money if it doesn't help you be happy? You can't take it with you when you go, so use it while you've got it.
You only live one life, and spending your time worrying about the future is so optimistic; at any time, there could be an accident that changes the whole course of your life, or an act of God (especially with climate change) that could wipe us out in an instant. Or, there could be some freak astronomical event that means we can't do anything about it (e.g. a meteor, or supernova).
What's the point of worrying about the future? It will come when it comes - in the meantime, do the things you want to do, spend time with your nearest and dearest, eat the food that makes you happy, travel the world, stay at home, do whatever it is that feels natural and right to you. There's so much to see - you won't even have the time in your one lifespan to go and do everything that you want. Even if you get to see the Northern Lights (definitely a bucket list item for me), will you have the experience of seeing it twice? Or three times? In winter, and summer? In every country that you could see it in? There's just so much to do - go out and do it!
With only one chance to go through this life, enjoy it! It's meant to be lived, not just observed from the sidelines.
I don't really have a moral to this - just something I'm thinking about. It's likely that the answer lies somewhere between it being short, and long, and that believing them for different purposes can help get over certain blockers in your life. E.g. if you are worried about life being long and having to plan for it, maybe focus on enjoying the now. If you think life is short and you're impulsively doing everything right now, perhaps make sure you sit down and pause just for a moment so you can plan out how you're going to go about doing it all.
Do you think life is long? or life is short? Give me your score here!
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Primal Fear - 3.5 stars rated on Letterboxd - great 90's movie with some very hot people (Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Ed Norton and Frances McDormand) doing some very hot acting. Courtroom scenes are always fascinating, and the amount of cuts that just had the audience have to assume certain things happened is always good. Twists on twists - still a strong recommend for me as a good courtroom thriller!
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Ugly Duckling bar - vibey ambience of a bar, some fun cocktails, situated in Richmond. Easy to recommend :)
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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The days are long, but the decades are short - I know I have linked this before, but I think the title of this piece is a great phrase to think about. Time is relative and is a human construct - so we can massage it as we want. Also, much life advice :D
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Could Ice Cream actually be good for you? - the more you read about it, the more that...it actually is good for you? What the f?
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How long should objects last? - an industrial design student tries to find out. Some very interesting ideation on how something as simple as an umbrella could be upgraded, updated, and changed to last a different amount of time.