The Brevity of Life
Summary: Life is short. If you don’t look around, enjoy it, and make the most of every moment, it might pass you by. We can’t control death. We can control how we approach life in spite of it.
This has haunted me for a long time, as a young and naïve teenager. One day you and I will be on our deathbeds. What do I want to be thinking?
Simply put, one day I want the severity, and number of my personal regrets to be as little as possible. But how do I plan to go about doing this? In this very moment, I want to be doing the things that will make both my ten year-old self and my hundred year-old self proud, whether that be through taking opportunities in front of me or saying no at the appropriate times.
I write about this idea of regret here.
Also, I want to be spending my time efficiently. My dad once said that “the time you spend doing something is never wasted - unless it’s spent playing games”. I think that apart from your inherent intelligence at birth (which you can’t control), our differentiator is how hard we work and in what direction we work. The direction requires reading and guidance - something that you can seek from more experienced people through calls and conversations. Your most valuable assets are your time and attention.
As one of my good friends described it, “bro got me feeling like a vector”. I write about balancing spontaneity and planning here; work is truly like a vector.
That being said, a counterargument was brought up by another one of my friends, who says that “playing games is not a waste of time” and “it's a great way to relax… also strategy games.” Mind you, this guy is one of the smartest blokes I know, and he has his own opinions on gaming - again, try to look at it from your own lens and find what works best for you.
There’s an interesting idea about how individuals want time to pass quickly in the moment so that they can experience the future, but in a wave of nostalgia and reminiscing, they’d do anything to be back in the past. For me personally, these were the days in junior high school - with my mates, we made the most incredible memories, messing around in boring classes, playing pranks on teachers and living life with no care for the future; in the moment, I wanted it to be over, but now that I reflect, I’d love to go back.
I write about how to make the most of high school here.
I want to share some quotes with you, again from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech (which was, come on, insanely good).
“Because almost everything - all external motivations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
“And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
