Social Question

Cruiser's avatar

LITS! Is life really too short?

Asked by Cruiser (40449points) April 26th, 2010

Maybe because I am getting older the acronym LITS seems to come up in conversation a lot more than I ever remember it. Plus it’s cousin the “bucket list” is pretty popular these days as well. Do you feel that “life is too short” and if so why and what are you gonna do about it?? And when did you first realize that urgency to do something to make the best of whatever time you have left?

Or do you not even think about it and go on your merry way? Is life really too short?

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53 Answers

Ame_Evil's avatar

Life is the longest thing you will ever do.

loser's avatar

No. Thread closed.

ebfable's avatar

Honestly, yes i have thought about that in my mind several times. Life is indeed too short. But you know what? I try and not think about it because i’d rather not waste my ‘short’ life thinking about it.. haha.

autumn43's avatar

It is for certain things – like getting into an argument with a sibling and never reconciling. Or traveling to places that you want to go but are afraid of the plane. Or telling someone you love them.

Those are just a few of the things I can think of right now. gotta get back to work!

janbb's avatar

Oh yeah – too short. I think I’ve started feeling that since I reached my 50s. Several of our friends have died young – in their 40s and 50s – and my husband and I are trying to pack in as much living as we can. There’s not much you can do about it but try to stay healthy, love as much as you can, and do the things that are important to you. I don’t dwell on it but I do feel it.

cheebdragon's avatar

Death can kiss my ass, I’m going to live forever!

(....okay, probably not but I can dream if I want to! Oh, damn it…...I’m going to really pissed off If I get hit by a bus today, for telling death to kiss my ass.)

Cruiser's avatar

Sorry @loser the grim reaper is in charge of that task!

Cruiser's avatar

@Ame_Evil Seems that way more often than not!

ucme's avatar

Nope! It’s what’s packed into it that counts.Life’s what you make it like the song says.

jfos's avatar

I truly believe it is. There are so many words in so many other languages that have more than four letters. Especially for something so imporant and pertinent to everything, why didn’t they make life a longer word?

MarcoNJ's avatar

Yes. I’m in my early thirties and I already got a ‘bucket list’....I wanna maximize my time. Not just work, pay bills, then repeat. So, yeah…life is too short.

Response moderated
FireMadeFlesh's avatar

It depends. If life were extended, but you lived it in the same state that most people live through their nineties, then maybe not. I think that if you work out what you want to do quickly, you can jam as much as possible into your life and die satisfied – that’s my plan at least. But then I am by no means running out of years, and I suspect the more mature members will be able to give a more insightful answer.

FireMadeFlesh's avatar

@resumedocket See the small text under the text box you post with – HTML doesn’t work when you are posting, we have our own method for creating in-text links here. Welcome to Fluther!!

Cruiser's avatar

@lucillelucillelucille so is your answser! lol!

marinelife's avatar

Life is too short, especially by the time you realize that it is.

Sophief's avatar

Life is too long, but the years do seem to be getting shorter. Teenage years are the worst, they last forever, or for what seems like forever!

lucillelucillelucille's avatar

I like to get to the fucking point ;) LOL

Snarp's avatar

Life is definitely too short, and so is youth. There are many things I want to do in this life, many of them with my kids, and perhaps grandkids someday. But dragging life out to extreme length in a nursing home hardly seems to be beneficial. That said, as long as my mind is active and learning and trying to produce something, I want to live as long as I can.

stranger_in_a_strange_land's avatar

Too long, by 5 months, 20 days and counting…

Blackberry's avatar

It depends on who is living it and what point in life they are in. It doesn’t seem short to me at the moment.

Simone_De_Beauvoir's avatar

It is when you are happy.

Trillian's avatar

Life is too short to waste on futility. Arguing, holding grudges, not striving for the things you want to accomplish; are all things that make me realize that over and over again.

Cruiser's avatar

@lucillelucillelucille Yes I see your point! LITS to waste any time answering my questions! I will remember that in my will…if you are still around!!! ;)

Cruiser's avatar

@ jfos My take is life is just another one of those 4 letter words that characterize the finesse points in life like love, hate, and those special words when the Doc tells you you have 6 months to live…S#!%, F@($, damn, crap…!

lucillelucillelucille's avatar

@Cruiser -You know what that q means to me! lol

Cruiser's avatar

@FireMadeFlesh That is far too sensible and IMO where people get caught by that “OH NO” “Not me” moment when life throws you a curve ball…then what?

jfos's avatar

@Cruiser I guess there are some pretty good four-letter words. Meal, boob, food, beer, Oasi (s understood). Do you have “6 months to live”?

Cruiser's avatar

@Snarp GA there! I agree as not much purpose in hanging in a nursing home drooling in a cup unless you are trying to burn up your estate so some ungrateful decedent doesn’t get a dime! And in that case you burn through your estate and then rack up some ungodly bills that they then have to pay after you are gone! lol!

Cruiser's avatar

@jfos Don’t matter to me! 6 days…6 months, 6 years! I live each day like there is no tomorrow! Yee ha!!

Cruiser's avatar

@lucillelucillelucille I can only guess…you ate your own cooking and only have hours left to live??? Nice knowing you kid! ;)

Coloma's avatar

I’m good…happily can stay, happily can go, don’t think about the long and the short of it, I just live in the moment! ;-)

gailcalled's avatar

@jfos: la vie, la vida, la vida, la vida, zoe, leben, leven.

I often wonder who this mysterious “they” is.

Kodewrita's avatar

Life is shorter than what we would want. Thats because we waste so much of it doing useless things while the the things that would make us feel the thrill of life pass us by.

Ars Longa, Vita Brevia (Art So Hard To Master, Time so little to do so——my own translation)

jfos's avatar

@gailcalled Don’t we all?

Coloma's avatar

@gailcalled

lol…yes, the infamous ‘they.’ ;-)

ParaParaYukiko's avatar

I wouldn’t say life is too short, but there are too many things to do in the time we are given.

Let’s see. For most of us here, we are expected to spend a minimum of 12 years in school, at least 4 more in college if you want to make any significant amount of money, and most of the years remaining working to make that money. At the same time, there are the things we want to do, like travel, raise a family, learn new skills like music, art or language, etc. All of these things take even more time, either to learn the skill or to make the money to do them.

It’s a problem with society. We (as a society) are so focused on money that we don’t give ourselves enough time to do the things that make life worthwhile.

Cruiser's avatar

@ParaParaYukiko That is what I used to think when I was 20 years old but I like the last part of your answer which sums it up nicely…

“we don’t give ourselves enough time to do the things that make life worthwhile.”

tinyfaery's avatar

No. It’s agonizingly long. If you do it right, you can pack a whole lotta living into a brief period of time.

nebule's avatar

yes it probably is and it’s all in the pathetic irony of life that we don’t realise it until we are happy and dying rather than realising it when we’re depressed and watching the journey endlessly span out in front of us like an never ending exam that you’ll have nothing to show for at the end of it

Draconess25's avatar

@cheebdragon If I become a vamp, want me to make you into one?

FireMadeFlesh's avatar

@Cruiser I make plans for the way I expect life to turn out, and anything major outside of that plan I factor in when it comes.

Fenris's avatar

In about 80 years, I’m gonna die. If I reshape the face of the world forever, my work will be forgotten somewhere down the line. I can pack a hundred lives’ worth of living into my time here, or I can just relax and enjoy being. LITS is for people that are afraid of their own insignificance and the absolute of ceasing to exist, and life is exactly as long or as short as it needs to be.

Gemini's avatar

Yes, I do think life is too short. I do my best to balance my less than healthy habits with my healthy habits, as well as balancing work and play. I’m hoping this will keep me having a good time for a long time!

janbb's avatar

@Gemini Sounds like a Gemini.

Gemini's avatar

@janbb That’s funny! I didn’t even notice that before you mentioned it. : )

cheebdragon's avatar

@Draconess25 Yes, that would be lovely, thank you!

Draconess25's avatar

@cheebdragon I shall find a way! Mwahahahah!

Cruiser's avatar

Well apparently life was not long enough for a great great customer of mine who last night dropped dead of a heart attack at 48 years old.

I almost got creamed yesterday by some A-hole who blew through a red light at 60 mph oblivious to the red light while I was waiting to turn left. Jerk was probably texting!!

You just never know….

consuelo's avatar

I agree, @Cruiser. Life is too short… I mean, if you wanted to do something crazy, like read every book ever written you wouldn’t be able to make much head way just because of that: life is too short.

Hypocrisy_Central's avatar

Shakespeare said it this way:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Pink Floyd said it like:
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

James 4:13–15 states it as such:
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”

If one stives to do things which he/she feels will leave some great legacy or will be known by future generations, then time might be the biggest thief of happiness as one would have a nagging need to spend many waking hours trying to leave that ”mark”. If one achieved that mark through athletics, then time will certainly be short as the body will fade and so will the ability to outrun your opponents to the end zone, outpunch them in them in the squared circle, hit more out of the park, etc., surely a point of depression for some. If it is amassing money and wealth, then time is short for many as they will never obtain more than a substantive living, and they will spend many hours being a wage slave just to have a few trappings and a vacation that is all too short and too long in coming. Once you hit your 40s time ramps up, and it seem those plans you had at 21 and never made it to seems to forever run from you because you have so little time and physical health to chase them.

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