Time can be your best friend or your worst enemy

I've been thinking a lot about time and age lately because I recently visited my Grandmother who is around her late eighties, but also I've been visiting my cousin who is around 5 years old.

To one, their world is coming to a close, but to the other, their world is just opening.

I began to think what if we suddenly found a way to make humans live significantly longer. What if people weren't considered elderly until they were 500 years old? And they were at the peak of their age around 250? How would the world react if we suddenly began living past 100 or 200 years after expecting to kick the bucket around 80 or 90? How long would it take for our mentality to readjust to having so much more time?

I feel like it could go either way.

We could really appreciate it knowing that we have so much time. People always talk about doing things before they die, what if you could do all those things now...twice? Most people say at least once in their lives, "I wish I could spend one more day..." While it doesn't always refer to the someone's death, it could, but in this pseudo-world where people suddenly began living longer, what if you could?

Or

People could get lazy knowing they would suddenly start getting older slowly. They would have hundreds of years to do things so why start now?
Population would probably sky rocket because there are simply not enough people dying (as morbid as that sounds).

It seems like we're always looking forward...sometimes too far forward. How are we supposed to live every day like its our last...if we know tomorrow is a brand new day with brand new challenges?

If I wanted to live every day like it was my last, I wouldn't be sitting here blogging, I'd be out surfing in Tahiti or sky diving or something crazy.

But if I know tomorrow is a brand new day, I might as well wait to see what the challenge is that tomorrow is bringing and face it because it could be my last day on Earth.

Dang that's confusing.

I think the only middle ground is realizing that while every day might be my last, I'm still trying to do things every day that make me happy that way in case I meet an abrupt end, I'm happy I guess AND if I don't, I still have a plan of what to do next, provided nothing crazy is thrown my way.

Dang that's just as confusing!

I don't know, I'm just finding it a little hard to "Live in the Moment" when everyone around me is talking about careers, grad school and stuff. It just feels like I'm trying too hard to get ahead of my normal life progression so that way if something bad is going to happen, I can still retreat and change something to make it better.



wildwombat