24 Hours to Live?

“Albert Einstein, upon growing tired of answering questions about his thoughts on relativity, once gave this response: ‘Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.’ I’m no Einstein. You probably aren’t, either. Yet we both have the capacity to live fully, here and now. I encourage you to live with intention, and with gratitude, and therefore make the next 24 hours stretch out ahead of us. This concept is a worthy one as our time draws even shorter.”—Dr. Guy McPherson

Planetary Hospice

By Dr. Guy McPherson

BELLOWS FALLS Vermont—(Hubris)—1 July 2023—I was speaking with my Canadian friend Paul recently. Paul has inspired a couple of essays at guymcpherson.com, and he inspired this essay by asking, “If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend it?”

Paul was echoing thoughts from ancient Greece. A few examples are noteworthy. Seneca, who lived from about 4 BCE to 65 CE, is responsible for these two lines: “Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life,” and, “The whole future lies in uncertainty; live immediately.”

Marcus Aurelius became Emperor of the Roman Empire, and oversaw its decline, during his relatively short life of only 58 years (26 April 121 to 17 March 180 CE). His Meditations, written as personal notes while he was Emperor reflect his personal thoughts on Stoicism and how we live. Meditations contains considerable wisdom, including the following lines: “Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see”; “Life is warfare and a journey far from home”; “The present is all we have to live in. Or to lose”; and,“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Meditations is replete with much additional wisdom, and I strongly recommend it.

Among the many things Paul and I have in common is the propensity for lying awake at night, thinking too deeply about things over which we have no control. This is one of the many consequences of being middle-aged in a world disintegrating on our watch.

It’s no surprise that my conversation with Paul led to his question about living 24 hours. After all, for many years I have been focusing on living with urgency, living with intention, living with love, and living with death in mind. As a result, some of my friends have followed this path, Paul included. 

With this essay, I’d like to expand the conversation to include you: If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend it? 

The bigger issue, obviously, is how to live your one, short life. Whether you are thinking about 24 hours, 24 days, or 24 years is not the primary point to consider: Rather, I encourage you to consider the relatively short time each of us will spend among the living. How you spend your next 24 seconds probably is not worth as much thought as how you will spend your next 24 days. The 24-hour timeline probably merits more time than any of us spend on it, in part because we are all busy with active lives focused on what we would like to accomplish in the coming months and years.

Paul’s question is a good starting point: “If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend it?” Of course, we can be relatively confident we will live longer than 24 hours. In fact, assuming we only live one more day will almost certainly lead to poor decisions about finances and, more importantly, relationships. In other words, the notion of living with urgency must be balanced with a pragmatic approach focused on longer-term survival. 

Each of us must respond to the 24-hour question based on our own lives and our own outlooks. How I spend every 24-hour period probably has little bearing on how you spend the same amount of time. Nevertheless, the question is certainly worth pondering on a frequent basis: “If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend it?” 

Another question worth thinking about: If you only had 24 days to live, or 24 weeks, or 24 months, how would you spend each of those lengths of time? Maybe that’s more than one question. If so, perhaps you can think about each of them.

Let’s start with 24 hours. It’s virtually nothing. If you had your tenth birthday today, then this is your 3,652nd day on Earth. Most people reading this essay have experienced more than 10,000, 24-hour periods. If you’re over 50, you’ve lived through considerably more than 18,000 days.

Admittedly, very few of those 24-hour periods amount to much. You might remember the dates for half-a-dozen specific watershed events. If so, you’re a rare individual. I recall several specific events, but I cannot recall more than a handful of dates, even dates that—at the time—I thought I’d never forget.

Human animals are relatively long-lived, an attribute that contributes to the inability of most of us to remember specific dates a few years later. As a point of reference, consider contrasting your life with that of a typical Mayfly. This animal has an expected, adult lifespan of only 24 hours. The Mayfly never asks the question Paul shared with me: “If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend it?” The Mayfly is busy eating and procreating. It doesn’t live long enough for its mouth to fully form. The Mayfly’s priority is underlain by evolution and by natural selection: procreation. And it’s been stunningly successful: At nearly 300 million years old, it is recognized as the oldest flying insect still extant. There are about 3,000 different species of Mayfly, and they are found throughout the world, except in the Arctic and Antarctica.

Back to 24 hours. If you still believe a day is a short period of time, consider the Mayfly and another, better-known invertebrate, the dragonfly. Consider the many other species that persist only a few months or years. And then, seriously ponder how you’ll spend the next 24 hours. Can you live with intention and with gratitude, and therefore make the next 24 hours seem to last a long time? Can you do the same with the next hour?

Albert Einstein, upon growing tired of answering questions about his thoughts on relativity, once gave this response: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.

I’m no Einstein. You probably aren’t, either. Yet we both have the capacity to live fully, here and now. I encourage you to live with intention, and with gratitude, and therefore make the next 24 hours stretch out ahead of us. This concept is a worthy one as our time draws even shorter.

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