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Think Life Expectancy

Your life expectancy is probably not something you think of every day. Most of us live our daily lives, as if we are going to live forever. But we are not. Time is precious, and yes, today could be your last day!

Think of it this way: your life expectancy is like the expiry date on a carton of milk, and you are that carton of milk. The question is, will you be used up by the time you expire, or will we have to toss out a full carton of milk?

What do we usually say when we toss out an expired carton of milk? What a waste! Right?

So I guess the challenge for you and I is to live out our lives to the full; to ensure that once we reach our life expectancy limits, the people around us will not say, “what a waste”.

Wouldn’t it be great if they could say, “here lies a person who has lived a full life! Full cream! Made butter. Woke me up with coffee and breakfast every morning! Fresh and delicious!”

You get the point, right? It just made me think. If you can choose, what type of milk would you like to be: low fat, 97% fat free, soy milk, almond milk, goats milk, lactose free, etc. or would you like to be a full cream milk? I think I know what I’d like to be.

The question is this: how does your label read? “Best by ….”, or “Use by ….” or “Sell by….”.

Life expectancy realities

On the positive side, our life expectancy has increased over the years as we became more and more civilized. If you live in one of those more civilized countries of course.

If you happen to live in one of the war torn or uncivilized countries, of which there are quite a few around the world, your life expectancy is considerably shorter than the rest of us. Sorry.

Here’s the deal: you live life by choice. Your choices have consequences and the expiry date on your life is one of those consequences. Yes, you can improve your life expectancy by choice, but that’s a discussion for another time.

When I was first confronted with my own life expectancy, it was put to me this way:

We humans have an average life expectancy of 25,500 days. How many of yours have already passed?

Oops!

So the primary purpose of this article is just to make you aware that life is short, even at it’s longest.

The only sure fire fact that I can assure you off with 100% certainty, is that you are going to die. We all are. But hey, on all the other days we are alive, right? And that will be the subject of my next article: How to get Work Life Balance, taking account of our life expectancy. So be on the lookout for it. I might even come back to this article and link it at the bottom.

Here’s a short video clip putting your life expectancy in perspective. You will notice a period of about 40 years between about 20 and 60, being our “work life”, and that part is going to be the subject of the next article.

So, if you are still reading, congratulations! It means you have not reached your expiry date yet!

Now, sit back and watch the movie. 🙂

All right, now the next questions for you to ponder are this: What am I doing with my life? Do I go to bed happy every night? How many people would really miss me when I reached my life expectancy or expired to use our milk carton analogy? What can I do to improve my work life balance?

Quote of the day: “We have to live a full life and there is no use to cry over spilled milk!” Make the best of your remaining life expectancy!

Stay tuned!

~ Will Kilian

Tags: average life expectancy, expiry date on life, how long do we live, human life expectancy, life expectancy