Is Life Long or Short?

January 2026

If you want to impact the world, is life long or short? I'm not wholly convinced by any objective reasoning. Consider how humans would perceive time in a hypothetical world where they grew old and died after only 10 years, or 1000 years. It's not clear. Yet between long and short, one of the answers is certainly more inspiring. 

We are often told that life is short. You have 4000 weeks alive. You will only spend perhaps 1000-2000 weeks in a position of health and independence in which you can make bold contributions to the world. Time seems to speed up as you age. These are all robust claims. Yet life is long. One's impact on the world has the potential to be contagious far beyond mortality. The generals who carved up continents in just a decade; the intellectuals who spawned ideas lasting thousands of years; the inventors who engineered technologies that built the world. None of them lived fewer than one hundred lives, for industriousness has proven a formidable weapon against the scythe of the grim reaper. 

You would have realised that the short argument is mathematical in its axioms. It comes down to "you only have this amount of time left". The long argument does not preclude obvious biological limits, yet its power is in manoeuvering around them and rendering them weak.

I believe life is long, and that is because I want to. The best I can fight for is to try to live a life with such intensity that it becomes long. And for you? For you to read this piece, it took 4 minutes of your life. I also hope that this piece may have greatly extended it.