If the average human life span was forty years, would you live your life any differently?

Yes… I would likely be dead by now and surely retired.

I would have had kids at 15 and not at 32 and many other things would have been different as well.

I would be making sure my paper work was in order

Of course, everybody would, it’d be completely unavoidable for one thing.

I would be less concerned about saving money for the future (for retirement, etc.).

Yes, hopefully I wouldn’t have wasted my 20s wondering around in an emotional maze.

I wouldn’t have worked as hard. I probably wouldn’t have kids, they take too long out of only 40 years. And I would have had a lot more sex and a lot earlier.

Correction: wandering.

it sort of depends. If I was born and raised normally, with a current normal life span (75–85), and then someone told me I was going to die at 40, that would be one thing.

If I were born in a civilization where EVERYONE dies at 40, and that was the only thing I had ever known, then that is quite a different thing.

Depends on the situation.

Well I already don’t feel confident about how long I’m going to live. I spent the “healthiest years of my life” on the brink of death at times so it’s tough to be optimistic about my later years. I’ve handled this thought in different ways as I’ve grown.

First was denial. Things suck now but it’s gotta end sometime, and my life will be much better someday. I was very future-oriented back then. Gotta work hard now so that my idealistic future will be that much better. Right now sucks anyway, may as well make sacrifices for when things will be better. I did not care about being kind to myself in the present.

These days, things are better than they were, but still far from the utopia I imagined, and I’m no longer so optimistic that things will ever be much different. It might be all downhill from here, for all I know. So I’m savoring the present much, much more, and I am much happier. I am kind to myself at the expense of some of my ambition, and that’s fine. I probably won’t be the rocket scientist I used to dream of being, but I also won’t be overworked and I know I will take time for myself, treat myself, and have interesting experiences outside of work.

So I guess it’s not really hypothetical for me – the change I’ve experienced is less focus on the future, more focus on the present. And more happiness.

Yes.

Like @answerjill I wouldn’t have worried about saving money as much as I did. I would have spent much more money on travel, I would have tried starting a few businesses. I think in my 30’s my life would have been more focused, more productive and more daring.

I would forget about education and travel right away.

Well…personally I think 60–65 years is plenty long a life span already, haha, and I am 54 this year.
I think dying at 40 would really free people up to make the most of life and certainly revoke worries about how they were going to provide for themselves if they lived to be 100, god forbid! lol
Other than reproducing early enough to launch your offspring from the nest I doubt things would change much.
Actually I have read that when the lifespan WAS only into ones 40’s that one or the other parent/husband/wife usually died within a couple of years of the last child leaving home.

Because of this middle aged couples never faced the challenges of long term marriages in mid-life.
There was no midlife crisis because one person was already dead.
“Til death do us part” did not account for living with the same person for 50–60-70 years. lol

Very differently, since I would have died 29 years ago.

I would make every minute count because forty years is a short life span and I would have made sure that I would make a big difference in this world.

We would also have to not adopt any new pets after the age of 25. lol
Outliving our pets is waaay sadder to me than outliving humans. haha

Well since I would be technically on my way out and suffering from shock due to that news, I’d be “wasting” what was left of it “wandering around in an emotional maze”. :/ Then I would probably do some death defying stunt to “live like I was dying” that would kill me earlier than the original plan. What a flop.

@Mariah Good for you! You sound wise beyond your years, but experience can do that for you.
I’ve gone beyond the 40 year limit and have seen how things came out. I don’t think I would have been able to do things any differently. I was who I was and am who I am. I just would have died before I found out how my kids turned out, or the wonderful things that happened (and the not so wonderful things.)

Probably not actually, I never thought I’d make 30 due to many factors. My life has been dangerous & I have LIVED.

A lot of my favorite people would be dead already. We’d miss out on any literature, art, music, or technology that people created after the age of 40, meaning our whole society would be different and diminished.