My grandmother used to be a robust woman.
Strong, smart, and as lightning quick in mind as in tongue. Time has robbed her of these things, and on my last visit I realized that she couldn't possibly have long left in this world. Before the middle of the next decade, my grandmother will likely no longer be around.
I'm currently in my early 30's, my grandmother is in her 80's. It made me realize something: Your thirties are the decade in which you lose your grandparents, even if everything went right. No unfortunate incidents happened to cause this... only living.
I looked at her, small somehow in her bed as game shows played on the television, and considered how a life could be so reduced. And I didn't think: "Well, she's had a good run," or some similar romantization of the situation. Even with 83 years under her belt I thought: this is bullshit, it isn't fair.
And then I realized something else. My mother, recently remarried, is soon to lose at least one parent. My mother is in her mid-fifties... that means that your fifties and sixties are the decade in which you're looking at the strong possibility of losing a parent. Again, this is the best case scenario given current life expectancy and assuming nothing unfortunate happens.
Now, I love gabbling on and on about the singularity and how medicine is going to advance in such a way as to give us longer and healthier lives, and sooner rather than later. But until those technologies start appearing, we need to be careful about what plans we make around them.
Even when they do appear, any person at any time could still be hit by the proverbial bus.
As we get older, time starts passing faster. The reasons are mathematical. When you were five years old a year was a fifth of your life. Having to take a long car ride could seem like an eternity because, from your perspective, it was a significant portion of your life. But by the time you hit thirty a year will only be one thirtieth of your life. Nearly a drop in the bucket. Ten minutes will barely be perceptible to you. Just imagine how time passes for someone who's fifty or sixty, let alone eighty.
You may think you have time with your loved ones, but you are wrong. The hourglass runs faster as it empties. What I'm saying here isn't just that you need to spend more time with your loved ones or stop to smell the roses (although I'm saying these things too), but that you have half the amount of time that you think you do. If you're thirty, then you won't experience twenty years with your parents (until the age where you may have to worry about their health), you'll experience much less than that - perhaps ten.
This sort of conclusion is the inevitable result of applying exponential/logarithmic thinking to time and progression.
So then, what I'm really trying to say is that the death of everyone you love is headed toward you at a breakneck pace. Moreover, so is your own. That thing you keep putting off because there's no time, or it's not the right time, or you think you don't have the coin, or whatever else.... You need to do it.
Because the reality is, you don't have time not to.
So the next time you think of your parents or grandparents, and they complain about the fact that you never call or visit, remember that the reason they do is because their time is moving much faster than yours, and they can feel it running out.
Because the thing your parents realize when they see their parents die is: I'm next. Or rather, I'm next, and that's the best case scenario.
So all of the petty annoyances that occur to you today, realize that they don't matter. All that matter is that you make a vision worth living, and strike forth toward it. None of the social status, money, or meaningless trimmings that people obsess over have any meaning in the face of limited time. You hear it time and time again, but it bears repeating: surveys have shown that people on their death beds regret things they didn't do, not the things they did.
Ignore what other people think and, instead, focus on what you want for yourself and your life.
Because until technology allows us to flip the hourglass over, every grain of sand is more precious than the last.
I am 53. Being the baby of a much older family, and for other reasons too complex to delve into here, death has always been a very familiar presence in my life. Yes, it is painful and makes us feel small and helpless, confused and lost, but the growth to be gained in that loss is tremendous! It saddens me that people work so hard to pretend it doesn't exist when it, and birth, are the most hyper-transformational and miraculous events known to mankind and they are afforded to every single human on the planet. Be proud of yourself for your courage and insight and trust me when I tell you that this understanding will continue to grow inside you until it spills forth and comforts those who come after you. Now, go love the hell out of everyone in your life!
Wow. Thanks for such an awesome response and for sharing your experience and insight. I agree: death is not a topic to be avoided. Yet I can understand why people avoid it: it's just too big. Willingly facing it when you haven't been forced to is not an easy thing.
Brilliant article and so true
Here is a thought that has occurred to me over the years and putting to rest parents and other elderly family: when we are robust we are very much in the physical where time is slow due to mass. However as we convert to mental and then spiritual the mass diminishes and time is commensurate to the mass of each individual.
Aging should not be feared, it should be looked at as an ascension where mass and time become irrelevant.
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