The Unspecified Deadline

I have about 30 minutes to think of something and blog about it, but having just spent a few hours doing math homework, the only things I can think about right now is how much I still have left to do and how little time I have left to do it in.

I wonder how much our lives would change if we knew how much, or how little, time we had left to live. Would we still squander our time, as some people do, or would the looming deadline (no pun intended) fill our lives with a sense of urgency? I'm inclined to expect the latter, mostly from my own experience with schoolwork and deadlines, but sometimes, knowing the exact date a project is due can foster procrastination. If I know that I have a paper due next week, I'll probably start working on it right now, but if I know the paper won't be due for a month or two, depending on the length and difficulty of the paper, I'll probably still wait for the week it's due before I start working on it. If I knew I was going to die next month, I'd spend the next few weeks far differently than I would if I knew I would live for a thousand years after that.

The trouble is that I know that I won't live for a thousand years. At maximum, I'll live to be 100, but I'll probably die a few decades before that. Given that I can expect to live several decades, that gives me a framework on which I could build a plan for my life. Then again, even if I take all the precautions necessary to live a long life, I may still die sooner than I should. The truth is that no one really knows exactly when they're going to die, and that lack of knowledge either fosters a sense of urgency, or it doesn't.

Some people, understanding that they could die at any moment, live each day to the fullest. Maybe they plan for their future, or maybe they won't, but they'll certainly prepare to cross the threshold. They make sure they have their ducks in a row, and they spend as much time as possible with their families. It's not a bad way to live, except that those who live that way tend to be short-sighted.

For others, not knowing when they're going to die means that they're going to die "later." These people expect to live a good, long time, and probably don't think very much about their eventual death. They live for the future, often at the expense of the moment. Alternatively, those who don't expect to die any time soon tend not to worry about how their everyday lives might affect their afterlives. Wickedness and righteousness mean little to those who don't expect to face their final judgement until a number of decades down the road.

Theoretically, there is some kind of "best of both worlds" lifestyle, such that one could plan for their temporal future while being spiritually ready to die at any time. Such people might live for the moment, but also prepare for the future. Perhaps that's the main reason we're not told when we're going to die. It forces us to prepare for the future we may or may not be given while forcing us to prepare for the "deadline" that may or may not come soon.