Life Is Like a Vacation. It Ends

Every vacation has three stages.

There’s the holly-crap I’ll never be ready, followed by packing, traveling, arrival, the first meal, the first sunset and night in a new bed. 

Basically it's a wild rush of go-go-go mixed with a bit of panic and memory-making moments.

The middle stage is the sweet one. There’s so much to do and see and experience. Everything is a new adventure - and you get to choose - after all you’re on vacation!

That brings us to the final stage—when you start counting down the days. 

There’s still lots you haven’t done or seen and yet time is getting short. Fellow travellers share stories of breath-taking hikes, incredible wineries and mile-long beaches. A guide book reveals a tour you would love to do, but it’s all too late—you’ve run out of time. 

The final stage is all about feeling like you had a great trip and wishing there was just a bit more time. 

On a vacation, just like in life, everyone knows the end is coming. The difference with a vacation is we plan for it.

Choices

Most of us have seen or heard of Tim Urban’s post Your Life in Weeks - it’s a dramatic reminder of how, in the end, every life is a quantity. For most people that’s about 4,000 weeks. And you’re cashing those in one at a time.

The good news is that life gives us choices.

As a kid watching my parents, life seemed to be a never-ending continuum of making meals, going to work, working in the yard, and washing clothes. It was all about work and family. They took care of family, contributed to their community, stayed busy and seemed content.

At some point, the brakes started to come on, they didn’t have the same energy, stayed home more, and the decline got steeper.

Looking at it now, it seems all the major choices in their life - whether to travel or not, hobbies and activities, friendships - were made early in life. Once the kids had all left home instead of making new choices, everything was in the rear view mirror. 

They weren’t choosing as much as they were living.

Living

I’m not sure what the “best” living looks like, but I think it starts with facing that life comes to an end. It is remembering that - like a vacation - time is not unlimited and we should choose well where we put our attention.

The contemplation of death and mortality was table stakes for the Stoics.

The Stoics believed that to live a well you needed to memento mori (remember you must die).

“He will live poorly who does not know how to die well.” ~ Seneca

“So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain but simply viewing it as one of the things that happens to us.”  ~ Marcus Aurelius

“What is death? A scary mask. Take it off-see, it doesn’t bite.” ~ Epictetus

But the compilation of death doesn’t have to be a bummer. Instead, remembering our vacation will, at some point, come to an end can be a door-opener to new choices.

Experiment

I recently counted the days until my 70th birthday (this tool makes the math easy). It was an interesting exercise that led to an even more interesting challenge.

It turned out I had almost exactly 1,000 days before the big cake. That led to the idea of ten 100 day experiments. Each experiment would be doing something I haven’t done before. I might want to keep doing whatever that is, or - like an experiment - it’s a do and done.

As soon as I had the idea I started journaling all the crazy, wonderful and scary things that could occupy my curiosity. It felt like I had given myself an open pocketbook to ten amazing adventures. 

With each idea I could feel the same nervous excitement I felt when I contemplated writing my book, dating again right after my divorce, or running the Boston Marathon at 65—like I was uncovering a world of trouble I could get myself into. 

I have good genes and I know I’m going to have many more years to come. And I want them to be my best years. Instead of retelling old stories from twenty years ago I want to talk about what’s got me excited today.

After all, I’m in my third stage.

Third stage

At some point in the third stage you will make some practical choices. Maybe you’ll write a will, see a financial planner and plan that dream trip. All good stuff, but how are you choosing to live? “Your experience of being alive,” writes Oliver Burkeman in his must-read 4,000 Weeks, “consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention.”

This is your life and it can be like the best week at the end of a long vacation. You still have lots of time - hopefully your health is good - and every day can be full of memory-making moments. 

And you get to choose.

“You’re going to die one day, and none of this is going to matter.” writes entrepreneur, investor and venture capitalist Naval Ravikant, “So enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work.“

Memento mori.

Here are three more posts about squeezing the best out of your life:

Am I Too Old to Learn?
Are You Looking Forward?
Are You in the Driver’s Seat?