For tomorrow we shall die! (But alas we never do)

I’m old enough to remember when the Poems on the Underground first started. They were little pockets of surprise interspersed between adverts for cold remedies and time shares (yeah they were a big thing back in the day). They were short poems, or snippets of poems,designed to make you smile, or think, or just distract you from your commute. One of those poems stuck in my mind for years and it’s the following by Dorothy Parker:

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But alas we never do)”

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie”

I must have read that poem for the first time in my late teens/early twenties and, as one does at that age, I completely bought into the philosophy. When I started work I was the sort of person that would work 12-hour days then go out drinking, fall asleep on the last train home with a half-eaten burger (yeah I was that guy), maybe get a couple of hours sleep before having a shower and getting into work ready to go. Rinse and repeat. And, whisper it, I loved it. I imagined myself as a player, an urbane sophisticate,what in a past age might have been described as a ‘young man about town’. I would stalk the streets of London from Mayfair to Whitechapel at any time of day or night like I owned the whole rotten town. It wasn’t true of course. I was just a pretty ordinary early 20-something let loose in London with more money than he had ever had before. I was working hard, playing harder and having fun. I was only giving cursory thought to the future because of course “tomorrow we shall die.” I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

“For tomorrow we shall die”

That poem came to mind when Saving Ninja asked me if I wanted to take part in the second of what is shaping up to be an excellent series of his thought experiments. The question for this month’s experiment is:

“What would you do if you knew with absolute certainty that you would die in exactly 10 years time? It doesn’t matter how you know this or what you will die of; in 3652 days you will drop dead.”

Now normally when you see this question it’s for a much shorter time frame. What would you if you knew you would die tomorrow or in a year? In someways that’s easy. Hug your kids/parents/partner. Eat your favourite meal. That sort of thing. But ten years is a much trickier proposition. Over ten years most people can’t just go: stuff it I’m quitting my job and living off my savings. They just won’t have the money to see them out. So for most of that time you have to keep on working and living. But the question is what does that work and life look like? The thing about ten years is that you can do something real. Something hard. Something that lasts. Most tech unicorns reach that status in less than ten years. You can write that novel, or that screenplay or that symphony…and their sequels. You can learn an instrument, run a marathon, climb a mountain. On a more personal scale I know people who have met, got married, had kids and divorced all in much less than a decade. Ten years is a long time. You can do whatever you want.

“Love the reeling midnight through”

So what would I do? What do I want? The world is my oyster. When I crack open its shell for the next ten years what pearls will I find inside? As I write I realise that a lot of things don’t draw me. I’ve looked down the road of collecting badges. Some badges I have sought and some badges have sought me but I have them pinned to my chest and I know what it’s like. I’ve loved and been loved. I’ve laughed until I cried. I’ve cried until I can’t breathe. I’ve seen a child being born and I’ve seen a person die. I’ve met prime ministers and royalty. I’ve built a hospital. I’ve performed across the world. I’ve written a novel. I’ve run races and played for my team. I’ve learned another language. I’ve gone back to university to get the degree I would have got if I had been braver the first-time at 18. I’ve been to I don’t know how many countries across four continents, staying in places from tents, to fleapits, to 5* hotels. I’ve climbed mountains. I’ve trekked deserts. I’ve seen the ‘big five’ in the wild. I’ve slept outdoors in a perfect silence under a sky so clear and unpolluted that I could see the glowing Milky Way spiralling above me.

I look back and I don’t feel like there is a list of things that I want to do that I haven’t already done. It sounds like I’m boasting. I’m really not trying to. Someone said once that if you write an obituary for most people those few paragraphs will show you how extraordinary every life is. Even when you condense down four decades or so like I did most people will have a pretty good story to tell. Write your own list. Revel in what you have already done in your life. You’ll be surprised at how long that list is. The point of this is to say that there isn’t a lot that I would change about my life if I knew I was going to die in ten years. I’ve had friends die in their, our, 20s. I realised then that life was short. But then I forgot it for a while through my late twenties into my late 30s when I was reminded of it all over again. So I decided to try to make some changes. Prioritise life over work. spend more time with my family and friends, read more books, go to the theatre, get more exercise.

That means if I only had ten more years I would do what I am doing now but more intensely. I would prioritise harder at work (and make sure I leave on time and take my holidays). I would spend even more time with my family and friends (particularly making sure I was there for my kids concerts and plays and sports matches). I would make a point to read those books (and watch those box sets) I had always been meaning to (particularly Dickens). I would watch more plays (especially Shakespeare standing outside at The Globe). Despite knowing I would be dying I would also still exercise so that I could enjoy to the fullest every second I had left. Most of all I would love harder. Love those nearest to me with all of the love that I would otherwise have decades more to give them. Drain every drop of love out from my heart then squeeze some more – because love’s like that, it doesn’t run out.

I now feel like I’m being irredeemably smug or embarrassingly schmaltzy. I’m sorry if it’s coming across like that. It’s absolutely not meant to. I suppose it’s just that I have been asking myself a version of this question for a number of years and already decided what my answer is and what I’m going to do about it. As I’ve said before, I want to enjoy my life today, not hold out for the flighty promises of tomorrow. Of course the final element in this is to bring in back to Financial Independence. Would I still keep shooting for my financial goals? The answer is are sounding YES! If I was going to die I would a) want to get FI as soon as I could so I could enjoy the rest of my time without working, and b) want to make sure that my family was going to be looked after when I was gone. Almost doubly so actually. If I’m not there I would want my wife to be able to give the kids as much time as they needed and so my FI stash is for our family, not just for me.

“(But alas we never do)”

The twist to that poem is of course its last line which I have studiously ignored so far. If you live your life to the drumbeat of hedonism today you do it without thought for the consequence for tomorrow. But, of course, tomorrow we are still alive. And, that is also part of the point of this thought experiment. We’re not actually going to die in ten years but it forces us to ask: If you would make changes to your life knowing you are going to die in ten years then why aren’t you doing those things now? None of us know how long we have. Not all of us will be here in ten years. Life is both very short and very long. If you can, think about making those changes today. In ten years you’ll thank yourself.

Further reading

If you want to see the excellent opinions that others have on this question there will be a few of us blogging about this so I’ll pop links to them here as they come in. in-deed-a-bly Ms ZiYou EarlyRetirement Saving Ninja Othalafehu SteelKitten Young FI Guy Dr FIRE Inspiring Life Design theFIREstarter

Thoughts?

What would you do if you only had ten years to live? Are you reading this thinking that you would make changes? What’s stopping you? Are you like me in thinking there aren’t a lot of changes you would make? If so, did you already make changes to get to where you are? I would love to hear from you. P.S. One final thing, I had promised that I would make my next post the one about my numbers. It’s almost done but I got distracted by this. It WILL go up on Monday. Forgive me?