Although I have little interest in the Bible, I know that the book of Psalms notes that our days are numbered. In thinking about that phrase, I decided to do some simple math to get an idea of what those numbers are. I came up with three that are useful in understanding the brevity of life: 80, 1,000, and 4,000. Here’s what I am getting at. The average age at death in this country is about 80 years. While that may sound like a lot, a few more calculations show otherwise. At 12 months per year, 80 years is fewer than 1,000 months. Continuing the math, since there are roughly four weeks in a month, an average lifespan is only about 4,000 weeks. Only.
Even that is not as much as we might think. A person reaches adulthood at about age 20. That leaves about 60 years, the equivalent of about 720 months or 3,000 weeks—not very damned much, particularly considering that the final years of one’s life are often limited by declining health and isolation.
Even those 720 months are fewer than we think. The 60 years between the ages of 20 and 80 total just over 20,000 days. While that might seem like a large number, that total includes work days, roughly 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year, between the ages of 20 and 65. Those 45 years total about 10,000 work days. Subtracting 10,000 from the 20,000 total leaves roughly 10,000 days of one’s adult life without work obligations. That equates to fewer than 400 months.
The point of this math exercise is not to quantify a biblical passage but to point out that our average lifespan, the time when we can fully engage the world, is much shorter than most of us realize, particularly when we are distracted by work and family and finding our route through the complexities of daily existence. I certainly didn’t consider the mathematics when I was in the middle of those years.
We often reminded about the brevity of life in sundial mottos like carpe diem or tempus fugit or in trite Facebook posts like ”Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life!” with the words decorated with rainbows and multi-colored balloons. I don’t want offer up other similar tedious homilies. Rather, I think that the best we can do is to simply be aware that the life is fleeting and that well-being is tenuous, and from there do the best we can with that reality. As Jack Gilbert advises in one of his poems:
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.
Let us warm ourselves in that furnace.