What If You Knew How Long You'd Live?

[livingdeb]

One of the exercises you can do to find out what you really want from life is to think of what you would do if you knew you would live only one day or one month or one year. Another time length I like is 10,000 years. These can all give you good ideas on what you should do with your life. Here is some brainstorming of mine.

One Day
* Write a will.
* Talk to people about what's going on and what to do with my accounts.
* Cuddle and smooch.
* Make donations.
* Eat cookies.
* Write an ironic last "livingdeb" entry.
* Give notice. ("Sorry, I can't make it in to work. Ever. Mwahaha!" Or maybe not.)
* Cancel dentist and doctor appointments.

One Month
* All the above.
* Quit job.
* Pay off house.
* Make presents for people.
* Give away stuff.
* Throw a party.

One Year
* All the above.
* Plant a tree.
* Write a memoir?
* Grant some wishes of family and friends?

Strangely, none of those dream things like "visit Paris" or "write a novel" are coming to mind. Is that because I've forgotten my dreams or am not imaginative enough to have any? Or because I keep living them? I don't know.

Ten Thousand Years

For the last situation, let's forget about all the problems caused by you living longer than everyone else, to the extent possible. Note also: Ten thousand years ago is when some humans first started farming. It's basically an unimaginably long amount of time.

* Learn self-defense. Living only 100 years, I can hope this won't come up, but if you live 10,000 years, this will definitely come in handy. Probably should build a nuclear shelter/hideout, too. Probably many in many different places.
* Keep up with technology and trends. Many people have refused to give up their horses for cars or refused to use computers, but if you live 10,000 years, you don't have that luxury.
* Give up on early retirement and focus on always having some useful job skills.
* Get better at staying thin and fit. Even tiny bad trends can really add up over 10,000 years.
* Learn more languages. Just a few hundred years ago, Latin was pretty handy--you could talk to priests in many, many countries. Now? Not so much.
* Learn more other skills, too. I may not always be able to hire people to do stuff for me.
* Diversify investments. Right now I'm pretty much depending on a single country doing okay. Although I do have some money in international mutual funds, they are managed in my own country. While I can hope that will be fine for the next sixty years, it's guaranteed not to be fine for 10,000 years.

Comments

[pamwheatfree.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to see as many friends as possible when you are living for a short period of time. Never forget to tell them that you love them, it is way more important than you think.

If you are going to live for 10,000 years, you need to know how to make new friends, I don't have this skill. If you learn it, teach it to me. I find that I am distrustful of strangers, and almost ask for references before I get to know someone. Ask indigo_rose, she had to give me references for John.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

I guess the "tell people you love them" part goes without saying.

So true about the people skills; they would come in handy.

I actually learned this skill from some show on PBS: Whenever you meet someone, you have something in common, and so you can start a conversation based on that. So if you meet someone at a party, you can ask where they know the host. If you meet them in college, you can ask what they're majoring in. The first time I tried out this idea, I came with a friend to do a campus interview for med school. After she went in, I started a conversation with another guy there waiting. "So, you're thinking of going to med school?" And that magically led to a whole conversation.

As far has how to figure out who is trustworthy, I can't help you there. My first impressions are not reliable. (The good thing is that I know this, so I give people more than one chance). However, if you start getting to know someone and then realize you don't like them, then maybe now you're stuck with a stalker. I prefer getting to know people in a group situation and hanging quietly in the background.

In the olden days, the way I'd make new friends is that I'd move to a new school and the teacher would introduce me to a girl in class with no friends. Or sometimes my brother would make friends with someone who had a sister my age. One time my parents were checking out a new apartment complex and we met a brother and sister outside. We said we have to move there because we'd already have friends! We did move there, and we did have those friends, but it turned out to be one of the worst places we'd ever lived.

Even now, I mostly just hang with people who are good at making friends, and then borrow some of their friends. Occasionally I meet new people myself and introduce them to my older friends, but that is rare.

If I ever needed more friends, I would probably go on some sort of organized camping trip. You can really get to know people well in that sort of situation where you see them 24 hours a day while they are having to deal with nature. There are also some groups that can function as second families such as churches, SCA, ultimate frisbee communities, and folk dancing communities. If you click with one of those, you can probably find friends all over the world through those channels.