“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”
–Evan Esar
There are some things we can do to influence the length of our lives, such as being cautious in order to avoid accidents and living a healthy lifestyle. However, we are very limited in our capacity to substantially increase the length of our lives. On the other hand, we have a great deal of control over the quality of our lives. We need to forget about how long we will live and focus on living life to the fullest. We should all be concerned not only about how much we can get out of life, but also about how much we can contribute to the world and its inhabitants.
It is not easy to objectively measure the quality of life, but I think accomplishments during our lifetime say a lot about the quality of the life we have lived. I don’t necessarily mean the kind of accomplishments that lead to fame and fortune. Our accomplishments in relationships we have with other people speak very loudly. If we consistently try to be a good friend, parent, spouse, employee and so forth, we will accomplish a great deal during our time here on earth. But we must also consider the things we have done to make this a better world for all. Certainly such people as Thomas Edison, Albert Schweitzer and Mahatma Gandhi have left giant footprints on this planet, which have made life better for all of us. In addition, literally millions of other people, whom we have never heard of, have made lesser, but still significant, contributions.
Each and every one of us has a unique set of talents and opportunities in life which puts us in a position to make contributions that others may not be able to make. I believe that we should seek out our uniqueness in an effort to find opportunities to serve God and humanity. The things we do may not seem very important to us, but in the overall scheme of things, they do make a difference. We should want to be productive, and we should also want to be happy. These two goals are not in conflict. Productive people are usually very happy.
One of the most important things we need to be vigilant about is not wasting time. Idleness never did anybody any good. We should try to get the most out of every day, whether it be in helping others or doing something that gives us great personal pleasure. Time is far too precious to waste. Although we should always be conscious of the importance of helping others, we need not feel selfish or guilty when we use some of our time for just indulging in the simple pleasures of life. We all need to develop enjoyable hobbies and devote some of our time to them.
I believe that thinking about death or how long we are going to live is a waste of precious time that could better be used to do something productive and enjoyable.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
