I Have This Theory About Life

I have this theory about life and its shortness. I think that in order for us to take in everything there is for us to learn as human beings on this planet, we'd have to be alive for 750 years. Don't ask me how I came up with that number; it simply feels about right. As most of us only make it to 70, we're left with a deficit of 680 years' worth of experience. We can be empathetic, we can read every biography ever written, we can keep the TV locked onto the History Channel, we can swab the sores of the lepers-but there always remain those annoying 680 years we'll never know about. I think that's why we believe in ideas bigger than ourselves: our short lifespan shortchanges us of knowledge of the profound.

- Written by Douglas Coupland, taken from his book Eleanor Rigby.

More Coupland here, here, and here.