Maybe you’ve thought about this. I didn’t, until I looked at the short life spans of animals. I was inspired to do this by Seth Godin’s post How Long is Now?
Animals don’t know how long they were created to exist. We humans have some idea, barring disease or accidents, humans can live, on average (as of 2013)
U.S. expectancy in 2011 was 78.7 years, which is slightly below the OECD average of 80.1. For U.S. men, the average life expectancy is 76, while it’s 81 for U.S. women. (At five years, this gap in life expectancy between men and women is smaller than the OECD average of six years). – Huffpost
We also know about life span because we can tell time and measure age. We’ve seen people die at ripe old ages. We know about how far we can go.
80 years or so is a good bit of time, but we are so disrespectful of the time we are given.
We say things like.
I”ll get to it tomorrow.
Someday I’m gonna…
I’ll get around to it.
We need to show more respect for time and the goals which we want to achieve in the time we are given. Let’s break down our goals in animal time.
Pretend you are one of these animals and the number next to you is your average life span. What if these animals knew how long they would live? What goals would you set knowing you only had that amount of time?
Rabbit Goals, 8-12 years
Guinea Pigs, 4 years
Mosquitofish, 2 years
Chameleon, 1 year
Dragon Fly, 4 months
Houseflies, 4 weeks
Drone Ants, 3 weeks
Gastrotrichs, 3 Days
Mayflies, 24 hours
We are all given the same amount of time,. Whether we use it, invest it or waste it will determine if we achieve our goals in life. Above all, we should at least respect the time we have.