Time left to us

An article called The Tail End  at Wait But Why has recently caught my attention. It showcases a different perspective of viewing life and our remaining time that I found interesting.

This perspective was not entirely novel to me, but I had not been able to pull the various threads together as well as they have done here.

In May of last year (2017), Chris Cornell committed suicide. I had always been a fan of his and was saddened to learn of his passing. He had always been on my bucket list to see live as a performer in any incarnation, but that is now impossible. There are a few musical acts that are now in this category for me and nothing that can be done about it.

Several days after his untimely death my wife and I had an occasion to have a night free of children and no prior plans scheduled. As we were perusing the local events calendars to find our evenings entertainment I saw that the group Diamondhead was playing at RIBCO. This of course became a must do item for those reasons outlined in this post. Diamondhead has been around longer than I have been an adult. They have also been a major musical influence on not just certain acts, but an entire musical genre that has been a part of my life. While this post is not about them in particular they did rock the house in front of a small crowd in small venue. It was inspiring.

They next morning I purchased tickets to an upcoming Metallica concert. This was a concert that had been recently added to their schedule as a charity event so we were able to get GA tickets to the 'floor'. Given it was an outdoor show that is not as hard as it sounds. As you would expect from a group that has defined a genre and been around for well over 30 years, the show was excellent.

Anyway, this is also not about a specific Metallica show.

What I am trying to spell out in my own rambling way and is shown very well to the linked post is that we have only so many experiences left to us in life. Some of those have larger meaning for us than others, and those that are larger come about less frequently.

One of the things that is emergent from looking at time remaining is that we need to spend the time and money that we have on memories for ourselves as well as those we choose to spend the time with rather than spend time and money on objects that do not provide the same experiential foundations.