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How was it today?
Did you accomplish something? Did you have a bad day?
Was it a significant one? Perhaps, was it your birthday?
A day, 24 hours. But what does that mean?
With the world’s average life expectancy at 73 years, that means you will probably have about 26 thousand of those days in your life.

Can you count to 26 thousand? Can you imagine a book with 26 thousand pages?
It sounds pretty long if you ask me. Do all these days have the same weight to them? Do they all feel like the same length?

I believe I know your answer, no. They don’t feel like they have the same length. Probably, you would say that the days when you’re younger were the longest and they feel shorter and shorter with age. Why is that?
Some may say because life becomes stable, routine takes over. It might as well be it. It also seems that we have fewer new experiences as time goes by. Same job, same people, same hobbies, same house and so on. It is usually up to destiny to throw something new at us, to shake us up from the suburban slumber.

Are we doing something wrong? No, it is the way we were evolved to be. Getting used to things by remembering past experiences. It is a double edged sword. It can help us to do tasks with excellence such as coding or drawing and to cope with tragedy, loss and grief. But it also makes things bland, gray, dull and numb. There is a saying “short and sweet”. It might be that if it was not short we wouldn’t feel as sweet anymore.

26 thousand days put into another perspective, a house fly lives for about 15 days. For a fly, our lifetime would be like 100 thousand years. Different branches of human ancestors, such as the Neanderthals were still roaming the Earth 100 thousand years ago. From this perspective, we live what feels like an eternal life. It might be that for the house fly, 15 days feels just like 73 years for us. Maybe, it also gets bored of the food or it doesn’t get as excited anymore when it barely misses the swatter by the 8th or 10th day.

Let’s imagine that we actually live eternal lives. That may be whatever way, heaven and hell, roaming around as spirits or locked into an endless cycle of reincarnations. From this perspective, in the long run, heaven and hell wouldn’t be any different. In hell, we would get used to the suffering, meaning we wouldn’t suffer anymore. In heaven, we would get used to the bliss, meaning we wouldn’t enjoy it anymore at some point. If we consider the possibility of reincarnations, it would be the most enjoyable as, in general, we wouldn’t remember what went on in the past life. Starting anew, with the chance to suffer and enjoy life to its fullest. Until time passes and we get used to things again. I feel exhausted just thinking about it. Going through school, finding out that Santa isn’t real, getting my first job all over again.

So I guess that’s it, in summary we are doomed. But are we?
With the current perspective, yes. However, it can be understood from the previous paragraphs that the most important thing is not lifetime, in terms of years or days, but how we perceive it. How we perceive time and all that surrounds us.

What would you do if you only had one day to live?
What would you do if you would live forever?
Which question is more exciting? Which question do you have an answer to?
Probably the first. So, how was it today?

Life is a struggle. All known life has been struggling and continues to struggle to exist. Through natural selection, the best adapted, fit and evolved beings are able to pass on their existence through the next generation. Those who can’t keep up with the world, cease to exist.

Beneficial traits that allowed a being to thrive are passed onto the next generation via genetic material. Life has posed an infinity of methods for that to happen, but more closely understood by us is the genetic fusion of two beings, male and female. Many traits, such as skin color, height, body type are very easily carried over to the next generation. Parents can fathom how their kid will look: “Will the baby have daddy’s eyes and mommy’s hair?”.

However, the fact that we can carry over our genetic footprint should not be taken for granted. For many insects, such as bees, ants and wasps, not all individuals can actually generate new life. In a bee colony, there are three types of bees: worker bees, drones and queen bees. Queen bees will mate once with drones and then lay eggs for the rest of their lives. Worker bees do not have any reproductive system and will never be able to pass on their genes.

Even if a worker bee has a beneficial trait, it could never be passed onto the next generation of bees. It will cease to exist along with this worker bee. It can be said that many of us might also feel like a worker bee. A lot of couples struggle to conceive children, resorting to modern medical procedures to succeed. And, for others, it might just be impossible. The thought that all achievements, stories, memories of a lifetime and the self will be lost without the next generation to safeguard them, can be despairing for anyone.

Individualistic centric humans that we are, focus on the individual and what one can achieve to advance the entire humankind. We have names, surnames and even nicknames, assuring that each of us really is a living self-contained entity. Worker bees do not have names. It can only be speculated whether they also reflect on these issues or not. But if they do, they might see their life as meaningless since as an individual nameless worker bee, nothing can be achieved and all will be lost in the end anyway. Nevertheless, they go on about their work, granting not just the hive but also many other beings, including us, survival.

Worker bees are responsible for pretty much everything in a colony: nursing the young, foraging for pollen and nectar, maintaining the hive structure and temperature and defending the colony. However, if it were not for the drone and queen bee, there wouldn’t be new bees, putting an end to the colony. There is an intrinsic interdependency in the three bee types. It can be hypothesized that they might even constitute a composite life. In this perspective, the colony is the individual self-contained living entity.

We can transfer this perspective to ourselves. For the ones that will not bear children, do not despair. As a worker bee, we all play a part in the struggle for existence that we call life.