Do the Math on Yourself

Up to now this has been the average person. Eighty years, twelve months each, somebody else’s life on a wall calendar. Easy to read and reason about.

Get a pen – no, actually get one. This is the one part of the book that doesn’t work if you only read about it.

Start with 960. Your whole life; all of it.

Now take away what you’ve already spent: Your age, times twelve. As I write this, I’m fifty-three: 636 months gone. Use your real age, not a kinder one sitting nearby.

Write what’s left – in the margin here, on paper, on the back of your hand, but write it:

> _______________

That’s the number. And that’s the generous version – it assumes you get all eighty years. Plenty of people don’t, and none of us get a receipt in advance. But averages are averages for a reason: A lot of people land short of them.

If you skipped the arithmetic – some of you skipped the arithmetic – this is the line you can’t hide behind. Twenties, around seven hundred left. Thirties, around six hundred. Forties, around four-eighty. Fifties, around three-sixty. Sixties, only around two-forty. Find yours. It’s smaller than you wanted. It’s meant to be.

Now draw it. Nine hundred and sixty dots, one for every month of a full life – eighty rows of twelve, a row for every year. Grey out the ones you’ve used – your age times twelve, counted off from the top left corner. That grey is gone; it isn’t coming back. What’s left is the white, and your whole remaining life is in there. Count it. Same number as before, but drawn instead of stated – and for some of you there’s more grey than white on the page now, which is a different thing to see than to be told.

Back in the first chapter I said the number was one you could almost see the bottom of. Look at what you just wrote. Look at the white on the grid. You can see the bottom of it now. Not a feeling – a quantity, sitting still, small enough to hold all at once.

Now, let this sink in. And don’t reach for the off-ramp – the one where I reassure you it’s quality, not quantity; that it’s not the years, but the life in them; that the number doesn’t really matter. It matters. You just wrote it down yourself. Let it be small for a minute without rushing to make it feel bigger.

Because now we do something with it.