Countdown

When I was in high school health class, I filled out a questionnaire that predicted life expectancy. I remember having the most imminent predicted demise in the class, with an expected 66 years above ground. Walking in the airport this evening, it struck me that I’ve arrived at the midway point. I chuckled, because I was at O’Hare, not Midway.

Reading about Kevin Kelly’s life countdown, then, was a timely discovery this evening. At age 55, he estimates that he has about 8500 days left:

That’s not much in my book. I can almost hear them ticking away as we speak. I look at my lifelist of current dreams and I realize that in only 8,500 days I won’t get to but a few of them. And what of any new dreams?

The life expectancy for an American male is something like 74 years. Ignoring the likely heart-disease in my genetic makeup, I’ll peg June 6, 2049 – my 74th birthday – as my likely checkout date. Like Kevin Kelly, I’ve posted this countdown on my google homepage – the first thing I see when I open up the Internet at home or at work. Fifteen thousand days and change. Because I can’t quite hear them ticking, I want this reminder of mortality to overcome my tendency toward procrastination.

I would love to say that I lived my life as if I knew it were finite, but that’s just not true. It’s more accurate to say that my head is in the sand.

By the way, ostriches don’t really bury their heads in the sand. That’s a myth.

via: boingboing and Kevin Kelly