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There's a beautiful sunset happening
May. 24th, 2008 10:31 pmas the day, in its progress, is the best of our lives on a small scale. A long, bright, groggy morning, a heart-colored sunset.
The average human in 2008 will live for 30,000 days. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It does to me, until I realize that I've already lived about 9,350 of them. It's like I spent 10,000 days trying to get started.
Only 100 years ago, I could have expected to live only 8,181 more days in my 17,500 day lifespan. I'd be over the hill, although back then I guess the hill was a lot lower. I would also have been married for nearly 10 years, have a child or two (assuming my wife survived childbirth), and be training an apprentice in some trade.
Of late I have wondered if there was something those men before me had that I don't. Obviously they were prepared for that pace of life since birth, as the world they were in expected those milestones. But how different was it really? Could I manage that life today if I was asked? Or would I crumble?
I'm 10,000 days old, and frequently feel like I don't know shit about anything. Obviously these men knew shit about something. Or did they feel like they were faking it the whole time, the way I do?
One of the luxuries of a long lifespan is the delayed start. I don't have to know shit after 10,000 days because I've got another 20,000 left. If I only had another 8,000 I would probably think differently. And what I ask myself is, am I abusing that luxury? Our ancestors imagined a world where progress would speed up tremendously, to the point of technological advance rendering the world unrecognizable to them. And while I think that's happened, it did so in ways they wouldn't have expected.
Kitchens of the future will make the food for you, they imagined. Travel will become painless, automatic. Household tasks will be automated, so people will have all this time to accomplish great advances in human achievement.
I have machines to clean my dishes and my laundry, a decorative lawn and machines to cut it. Markets to deliver prepared food, and cheap, reliable transportation to get it to me. It's 2008, and while I may not have a jetpack or a flying car, much of what they imagined came true, but I don't feel very enlightened by it. I mostly feel like I have a lot of free time that I don't care to do anything with. Sometimes I think hand-washing laundry was a better approach, because now that I don't have to do that, it turns out it wasn't keeping me from doing anything very useful anyway.
Sometimes, after a day like today when I did basically nothing important, I wonder if I am betraying their faith in the future.
The average human in 2008 will live for 30,000 days. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It does to me, until I realize that I've already lived about 9,350 of them. It's like I spent 10,000 days trying to get started.
Only 100 years ago, I could have expected to live only 8,181 more days in my 17,500 day lifespan. I'd be over the hill, although back then I guess the hill was a lot lower. I would also have been married for nearly 10 years, have a child or two (assuming my wife survived childbirth), and be training an apprentice in some trade.
Of late I have wondered if there was something those men before me had that I don't. Obviously they were prepared for that pace of life since birth, as the world they were in expected those milestones. But how different was it really? Could I manage that life today if I was asked? Or would I crumble?
I'm 10,000 days old, and frequently feel like I don't know shit about anything. Obviously these men knew shit about something. Or did they feel like they were faking it the whole time, the way I do?
One of the luxuries of a long lifespan is the delayed start. I don't have to know shit after 10,000 days because I've got another 20,000 left. If I only had another 8,000 I would probably think differently. And what I ask myself is, am I abusing that luxury? Our ancestors imagined a world where progress would speed up tremendously, to the point of technological advance rendering the world unrecognizable to them. And while I think that's happened, it did so in ways they wouldn't have expected.
Kitchens of the future will make the food for you, they imagined. Travel will become painless, automatic. Household tasks will be automated, so people will have all this time to accomplish great advances in human achievement.
I have machines to clean my dishes and my laundry, a decorative lawn and machines to cut it. Markets to deliver prepared food, and cheap, reliable transportation to get it to me. It's 2008, and while I may not have a jetpack or a flying car, much of what they imagined came true, but I don't feel very enlightened by it. I mostly feel like I have a lot of free time that I don't care to do anything with. Sometimes I think hand-washing laundry was a better approach, because now that I don't have to do that, it turns out it wasn't keeping me from doing anything very useful anyway.
Sometimes, after a day like today when I did basically nothing important, I wonder if I am betraying their faith in the future.
