A Life Long Lived vs a Life Lived Long

There probably is some deep meaning to the title. But really, I just made it up. If you’re anything like me, you probably do look for meaning and purpose as you move into different periods of your life. The more you age, for some of us, the more you grow and things generally start to matter differently. The truth of it all, though, is sometimes our realities are just what you make it. Back in the day, the 1900’s to be exact, their reality was that you lived almost long enough to have a few children then die. Morbid, right? Did you know, according to a Vital Statistics report published by the CDC and other agencies, the average life expectancy in the 1900’s was only 47.3 years? Can you imagine? Their midlife crisis’s came at the tender age of twenty-three…..Today we’ve almost doubled their life expectancy at somewhere around seventy-nine years. I’m rounding up a bit, but you get the point.

For us life looks a lot different, though. We can actually live long enough to see our children’s children have children. Now, it’s clear that the numbers vary from study to study, but the clear and evident fact is that we are living longer. In fact, ladies prepare yourselves for this…. According to one study, the gap between men’s longevity and women’s is starting to narrow. So with so much more time than the folks of the nineteen hundreds, what do we do with it? Well, we feel a life long lived should be better than just a meaningless life lived too long. So our prescription for you is to live it up. Of course nothing too crazy, but you should take that trip you’ve always wanted to take. Or, you should go to that karaoke night you’ve been too shy to go to and belch out the lyrics to your favorite 70's, 80’s or 90’s tune.

Okay then. To get you started we’ll leave you with a few things you can add to your bucket list. Hopefully you’ll take the time you’ve been blessed with and make the most of it.

Bucket list: 1. Write a letter professing your love to your long lost (Fill in the blank). 2. Learn a new language and then visit that side of the world to practice. (Post COVID of course) 3. Make your own movie and see where it goes. You could be the next YouTube sensation. 4. Sign up for an interesting class. (ie. Photography) 5. Adopt a friend. (the human or pet kind.)