Experience: the real thing

… Croesus thought that his wealth and royal blood made him the happiest man in the world, but Solon disabused him, pointing out that if – given the brevity of human life – he really wished to be happy, he should think seriously about what would make him so. 'Call no man happy until he is dead,' Solon said, meaning one of two things: that you cannot estimate whether a life was happy until it is complete, all its triumphs and sorrows counted to see which has the majority; or, that life is so full of suffering that its absence is the greater blessing. This latter interpretation is suggested by Solon's mention of the youthful brothers Cleobis and Biton, whose mother Cydippe begged Hera the Queen of the Gods to give them the greatest gift possible, whereupon Hera immediately gave them an easeful death.

I tell my students all this, and they shrug their shoulders; when young we are immortal; old Greeks and old age mean nothing. So I ask them how many months, at age 20, they have already had; those who can multiply are shocked to find that 20x12 = 240. 240 out of 960! Worse, out of the 620 waking months! Having thus secured their attention, I tell them the good news, speaking ex officio as a chair-holding Professor of Philosophy, that there is no such thing as time. By this I mean that the real thing is experience, not time; that time is elastic around experience, so the more experience you have, the more time you have. Here are two proofs: (1) Go for a romantic weekend with someone you really fancy to somewhere really lovely, and while you are there you are there forever; yet on the Monday after your return the weekend will seem to have passed in a flash. (2) If you do exactly the same thing at every moment of every day – rise at the same hour, eat the same breakfast, read the same words on the same page, etc., over and over, all your days, how many days do you live? One.

It follows that to live richly in experience, with enthusiasm, with passion, with goals to strive for and mountains to climb, you live not 960 months but 960 lifetimes, or more. Why waste time scrolling your phone, arguing, hungover, regretting without learning from regrets?
…

A.C. Grayling
https://open.substack.com/pub/acgrayling/p/a-thousand-months?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios