Contrary to Popular Belief, Life is Long, Not Short

The idea that life is long is not very popular. Everyone that I’ve talked to have proudly declared that life is short. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Life is actually long but people just have a hard time grasping how long time actually is.

The problem with thinking that life is short is that it looks at the short term and think how short life is.

If you of course evaluate life over the short term, it will seem like time as passed by so quickly! However, that’s not the right evaluation period to measure a long thing such as life. Life measures the long term, not the short term.

Look at it from an entire lifetime’s worth of time. As of a 2020 report, the average life expectancy is 81.4 years for females and 76.3 years for males in the United States. Looking at it from that angle, it is an immense amount of time to build your goals around.

That is terrific news! No matter how many and how much mistakes you’ve made in the past, you still have plenty of time to climb out of it and come out on top. It’s a great thing that life is long.

Maybe you’ve taken on too much debt and partied too much. Or maybe you were born into an abusive family. No matter what your starting point in personal finance is, there’s always a way to better your situation. It’s what you make of your life that will ultimately show in the end.

Don’t listen to those people who say that life is short. It’s not as bleak and temporary as people make it out to be. You have more than enough time to go at your pace and still win.

Why Life is Long

Life is long when you actually start counting the days. People who live day by day and consciously keep count of each and every day rarely say life is short. Additionally, because life expectancy is generally rising, you gain extra time for each additional day that you are alive.

By living an extra day, you are prolonging your life by more than the day you’ve been alive for.

Remember the last time that you’ve spent meditating? Didn’t it feel like an eternity to meditate even if it was just for five minutes? There’s a good chance it did. Anyone who’s gone through it will attest that 10 minutes is a meaningful amount of time.

There’s a reason why solitary confinement is considered to be the harshest punishment for prison inmates. Being alone for even a month is enough to cause permanent psychological damage. And that’s for a month. Imagine how it’ll feel like after a year. It must feel more than an eternity. It must feel like an eternity and a half.

Life only feels short but it isn’t actually short. We generally want more of what’s beneficial to us. The fact that we can’t have more than 24 hours in a day makes us crave life even more. When we can’t get it, we start talking about how short it is.

Therefore, life is long, not short. It only feels short.

Life is Long: Think About Your Own Life

Think about your own life right now. If you’re in your 20’s, then think about how far you’ve come from when you were 10 to when you were 20. When you reflect and actually think about it, it feels like an eternity of time has passed.

If you’re in your 30’s, think about the time between 20 and 30. I bet you’ve grown tremendously between that decade and you can only grow more. So on, and so on for the older folks. There’s a great chance that when you take a breather to reflect and think about your own journey, a long time has passed.

People usually go through a year and think about how fast that time has passed. Then they think the exact same way the next year, and the next year, and the next year as well. Then after accumulating those thoughts after individual years pass, they start to be convinced that life is short.

Of course, taking each year independently reinforces the idea that life is short. However, an individual year does not represent an entire lifetime. To accurately conceive it, we need to multiply that year’s worth of perception by 80+.

Oh man, doesn’t life start feeling like a long time if you look at it from that angle.

Life is Long: Interesting Things Happen Every Day

Every day you have the chance to do something meaningful and impactful to your life.

It doesn’t have to be 10 or 20 good decisions you have to make in a day. You just need to make one or two over a year’s worth of time. That will make you a very successful person.

However, the overarching idea that still stands is that there are countless opportunities for you to achieve your goals. There are more interesting things that happen in our life that take for granted every single day.

Even just living one extra day more means you are the oldest you have ever been in your entire life. That’s more interesting than we give credit for.

One interesting thing that you can do in your long life is for you to SMASH that social share button for the Google algorithm, BERT 😊 . BERT loves the idea that life is long and he wants everyone to know it! So he will appreciate a gentle and quick share of the article.

With that, let’s explore reason #2!

Life is Long: You Can Always Change Your Life

As life is long, you ALWAYS have the power to change your life. Did you know that Colonel Sanders started KFC when he was 65? You are never too young or never too old to do anything. You are in just the right spot.

It’s positive news for people who understands that building wealth is a long-term game. If life was actually short, there would be no rags to riches stories. People should just give up if they are in their 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s.

Whatever your situation is, there’s always someone out there who’s had it worse and came out ahead. Why? They understand that it’s a long term game that they’re playing. They actually have the patience to keep putting in effort every day.

Some days, the effort will be minimal and other days, it’ll be impactful. However, by showing up and putting in the effort, they changed the trajectory of their life to be a richer one.

What a great thing that life is long.

Life is Short Counterpoint

The Youtube video above argues that based on an average life expectancy of 82 and starting at the age of 22, you only have about 10 years of enjoyable life. This is after taking away sleep time, health problems, time spent doing chores, and the like.

It argues that if you live for the weekend working a job that you don’t particularly enjoy, it means you only have until age 32 to enjoy your life. Therefore, life shouldn’t be spent working for somebody else doing things you are not passionate about.

Rather, it should be spent on work that you enjoy doing, instead of following the money you should follow your passion.

Counterpoint is Wrong

The problem with this argument is that it makes it seem like we only have 10 years left of our life. Time does not work like that. You don’t just magically shave off 20 – 25 years of your life to sleep. You actually have to go through the process of sleeping eight hours every day.

Life doesn’t magically stop at the touch of a button or the snap of your fingers. The journey and the process of going from one time period to another actually takes, well, time.

Even if you don’t enjoy your job, you have to go through the process of doing it. Arguably, life is even longer now because you are doing something you don’t enjoy. Counting the hours and time that passed doing mundane tasks is a surefire way of stretching time out further.

Even then, if you follow the steps to be rich and achieve financial independence, you can retire earlier than 65. By working at a job you don’t 100% enjoy for money, you can enjoy your life faster than normal. After you retire, you can follow a passion project that you’ve always wanted to pursue.

You can start to find meaning.

There’s very little chance that there’s another job that will fulfill everything you’re looking for, anyway. You might already just be in the best spot you can be in.

You Hear it Only When Someone Passes Away

When someone says life is short, it’s usually after someone close to them passed away. It creates a short-term bias where one rare life changing event influences another’s perspective on their entire life. It’s not every day that that a person you love passes away.

It happens once every blue moon, if that. We shouldn’t base an entire life view on one extraordinary event. Sure, there will be some bumps in the road like that that makes you question if life is long.

However, it should never make you change that viewpoint. One extraordinary event does not represent the whole.

Our Bodies are Stronger Than We Think

One thing that helps our lives be long is that our bodies are stronger than we give credit for. Our bodies are sturdy and able to withstand more than we think.

There’s this example of a North Korean defector who still lived after being shot five times. The most life threatening moment has passed and he is now alive and well. Our bodies are more robust than we realize and give credit for. We can still stay alive after the most damaging wounds are inflicted.

It goes without saying that it was an unfortunate incident that occurred. It sickens me that the defector was shot when all he wanted was freedom. However, the idea that I wanted to highlight is that our bodies are very sturdy and durable to allow us to live a long life.

There are unfortunate events that does happen that make it impossible for us to say life is long. Things like cancer is one such example. Automobile accidents or even lightening strikes are more examples.

However, that’s no reason to not live your life to the fullest potential. We can achieve a lot in one lifetime and leave the world a better place than when we found it.

Life is Long: Fantastic News!

As it relates to personal finance, the fact that life is long is phenomenal news. Having more time is more impactful than having more money. $5,000 in your 20’s is tremendously more valuable than having $5,000 in your 30’s. So much more that I would much rather take $5,000 when I’m 20 than taking $10,000 when I’m 30.

A 10 year time period is worth more than double any amount of money. Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world, after all.

The power of compound interest shows in my 401k account. I’ve contributed way more money to my second 401k account than my first 401k account. Even then, guess which 401k account has more money? That’s right. The first one.

I’ve contributed approximately $56,000 to my second 401k over 2 years and have about $67,000 in it. A 20% return. I’ve contributed approximately $70,000 to my first 401k over 3 years and have approximately $117,000 in it. A 67% return.

Even if I contribute the $28,000 for year 3 to my second 401k, that would put it at $95,000. I may have contributed way more money but I end up with much less. Why? The power of time. The first 401k account had 5 years to compound. The second 401k account had only 2 years to compound.

This illustrates the benefits of knowing that life is long. If you just start today, then your future self can be well poised to grow to heights you’ve never thought was possible. Don’t buy into the doom and gloom of people saying that life is short. It’s just not true.

Life is long and don’t you forget it.