A number of videos on Youtube show different people interviewing elderly people about what advice they would give to younger people. They would always give an advice along the lines of “Learn how to ski”, “Travel more”, “Do work that you actually love”, “Get married”, “Play tennis”, “Learn how to cook or bake”, “Spend more time with your children or grandchildren”. Most of them would then always muse about how quickly time has flown by and now they are 60, or 70, or 80 year olds.

All of these advice have one thing in common. They are all actions. They all require you to Do Something.

Now it’s quite fascinating how older people are usually the ones who reach this realization. You should do the things you want to do, you should make the most out of your life. You should do the hard things and delay gratification. People don’t regret the things they do, they regret the things they didn’t do.

To exist is to be, but to live is to do.

To the second point of what the elderly people say is that they don’t realize how fast time has flown by. You can argue that there are scientific explanations of this, such as that as we grow older, the rate at which we process visual information slow down, that’s why time seems to “speed up” as we grow older. Or there’s another theory that 1 year for a 5 year old person feels longer since it represents 20% of their life. This also explains why 1 year to a 50 year old person feels quick since it is 2% of their life.

Scientific explanations aside, there hasn’t been definitive evidence as to why time goes faster the longer we are here on earth. Regardless, this mystery still remains true no matter what explanation we want to ascribe it to.

The point is, life isn’t as long as we think it is. And it’s important to recognize that. We can’t just keep running away from our problems and seek refuge in our comfort zones. Life begins when we face it head-on and do the things we fear the most.

We are fortunate to be able to learn from the people who experience life the longest. It takes a certain wisdom to realize that life doesn’t wait for anyone, but we shouldn’t be too stressed about it either. Walking the fine line between this paradoxical truth about life is where we should all strive to be.

Remember that in order to have the sense of agency and autonomy in our lives, we realize that we have to serve ourselves and listen to our feelings, needs and desires before being there for other people and things. Everything we do costs time and time is finite. Other people, especially our loved ones and friends will compete for our time whether they have good intentions or not. We should prioritize those important to us after we have already served ourselves. Temptations such as vices will sap valuable time away from us. Procrastination due to laziness or analysis paralysis will also stop us from reaching the goals we want for ourselves.

With all these in mind, we can begin to take back control of our lives, which will sometimes slip from our grasp. We should always keep in mind that we are here on Earth but only for a short while. We should strive to do the things we enjoy and live the life we would be proud of when we look back.