The significance of time in our lives is something that I cannot even express in words. Perhaps, the best I can communicate it is by saying that it literally gives meaning to life itself.

We all have one life to live and our time is very limited. Life may seem like an arduously long journey, but in hindsight, I am sure it will have been merely a fleeting shadow on this stage of a world.

This agent of change is necessary though, as it is what keeps balance on this planet of ours where the old die to make room for the new to flourish. It may sound paradoxical, but death is what helps life sustain itself.

If you ask people around, I’m sure no one would tell you that they would like to die but we all know it will happen nonetheless. We never know when it will happen and I think that’s how it should be but what if we all knew exactly when it was going to happen?

The Countdown

What I am trying to say is something that has been explored in movies like “In Time”, in which people had a sort of a clock implanted in their bodies which literally counted down the time they had left.

Let’s say, we were all born with something like that. A clock that told us the date and time of our death and that counted down to it. Every second of every minute would be a conscious reminder of our impending fate.

It’s not that we are not aware of this fate right now but a clock that puts it right in front of your eyes? I think that makes death much more tangible and that much more real, at least psychologically speaking.

I wonder how that would affect humanity. Would it be something that we just get accustomed to and be like how we are today anyways, or would it change us, for better or worse?

Why It Could Have No Effect

Let me give you an example of something that we all experience from time to time. We have a lot of work to do in our daily lives and usually we have deadlines to complete them.

Even though we are supposed to do something important within a certain amount of time, it might not always bring out that sense of urgency in us. Of course different people have different ways but more often than not, people do not take the work seriously until the deadline approaches very near.

That’s especially the case if you have a longer amount of time to deal with something. Remember when you got a month of holidays in school and yet you only started doing the assignments in the last week or so?

The same could happen if we knew about our time of death. Even though we would know, we would still have years before we would actually need to worry about it. I mean, if you have 80 years to live, would you be worried about it in your 20s?

Why It Could Be A World of Difference

Each of us is different than the other and we all want different things out of our lives and this is the factor that could mean a world of difference to a lot o people.

See, not everyone wants to change the world. Many of us are content doing our work and living life normally. But there are also many people who want to change the whole world and I think it is these people whom this could matter the most.

Knowing exactly how much time they had, could help them in many ways and they would develop a laser sharp focus to achieve what they set out to in the time they had, which would only be a good thing for the world and all of humanity.

Even if a fourth of humanity is motivated to do the same, I think the world would change overnight as the synergy that would develop, would be unlike anything ever before and I wonder the heights it could propel us to.