Blink.
Done?
Okay, so in an average life of 75 years you’ve got 2.4 billion seconds. A blink of your eyes takes about half a second. So, say your life is the history of Earth (4.5 billion years)… then your entire existence on it is nothing but One. Single. Blink.
Or one 4-and-a-half billionth of the total (or if you really want to know and I know you do: 2.2222222e-10).
So if your life’s but a single blink, each thing that’s happened in your life, that will happen in it, all the people you’ve met (and are yet to), all the cool shit you’ve done and that’s left to do, all the traveling, roadtrips, days down the beach, nights down the pub, days at festivals, just hanging with your homies at home… all of that, on the scale of the history of this planet.. barely even registers.
Everything is fleeting –all the people that you come across in life, all the moments, all the adventures
So whether you get to spend years, days, only weeks or even hours with someone, be present and be grateful for the time you got. Without the pains of thinking how short it is, was, or will be.
Because whether it’s years, weeks or hours you get with someone, either way, it’s not even a blink. So don’t miss it.
All things human are doomed to a short life and perishable, and in the boundlessness of time they take up no part at all. If we apply the scale of the universe, this earth with its cities and peoples, its rivers and surrounding sea, we may regard as a pinprick: if compared with all time, our life occupies less space than a pinprick…¹
– Seneca the Younger (from Consolation to Marcia)
——-
¹ From Seneca: Dialogues and Essays (translated by John Davie), Oxford University Press, 2007