I have a life full of dreams! There are so many things I want to do before I die. One of these days, I want to visit London, Edinburgh, and St. Petersburg, for example. One of these days, I want to start my own charity. One of these days, I want to learn how to ballroom dance. One of these days, I want to get married. One of these days I want to be an accessory to a crime.
Well, we only have so many days here on this earth to do all the things that we want to do “one of these days.” To emphasize this point, I want to share with you what my BUS 310 professor, Dr. Daniel Port, once shared with me.
Dr. Port said that if we’re lucky, we could live to be a hundred years of age. That’s one hundred years to do all the things we want to do. One hundred years to do all the things we keep saying we want to do “one of these days.” 100 years; that’s 36,500 days. That sure seems like a long time, right?
Well, below this text I have a link to a calendar with more than 100 years worth of days on it. The calendar starts on January 1, 1987 (the first day of the year I was born) and ends on December 31, 2087.
The first thing I want you to notice about this calendar is that 100 years worth of days really is not a long time.
You’ll notice that all the days from January 1, 1987 to the present colored black. If you are born in 1987 like me, these are the days that have already passed. They are the part of the 100 years that have come and gone, never to be seen again. Now, compare the days that have passed to the days that are still left. 20% of the days are already gone.
But wait! There’s more! I stated earlier that Dr. Port told us that if we were lucky, we’d like a hundred years. But the truth is that most people are not that lucky. The average American lives to be only 78.2 years of age, according to the United Nations. When you split up humans by gender, there is even more of a difference. The average male lives to be 75.6 years of age, and the average female lives to be 80.8 years of age.
Looking at the calendar, of the days remaining in the 100 years, the part marked in blue represents the average male lifespan. The pink area beyond the blue represents the female lifespan. Whether you are male or female, the fact is that when you consider the average lifespan of an American, you end up with at least 20 years (or 7,300 days) less to work with in your lifetime from the 100 years.
The moral of this pep talk is that you should think carefully when you consider all the things you want to do one of these days. For me, all the things I want to do “one of these days” literally has to be done on one of the these days on the calendar below. And, as the calendar shows, there are really much fewer days for us to work with than we think.
Note: This calendar was generated by a JavaScript. I cleaned it up in a hurry, so it’s possible that I made some mistakes in the calendar, so please bear with me.