You Have One Insanely Short Life. Do Something Meaningful With It

Live your own subjective truth

Thomas Oppong
5 min readMay 23, 2023

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Photo: Editorial rights purchased via Freepik

Human existence unfolds within the strict boundaries of time.

We are gifted with consciousness, the ability to perceive, think, act, pursue and experience the world around us.

But for a very short time.

It’s even shorter if you don’t realise the shortness of life soon enough.

“Life is half spent before we know what it is,” observes poet, orator, and priest George Herbert.

In the grand scheme of things, our lives are fleeting moments, mere blips in the vast expanse of eternity.

It is within this profound realisation of the brevity of our existence that the imperative to do something meaningful with our lives arises.

The fallacy of time is that we all think we have time.

Life’s meaning does not lie in its duration but rather in the depth and impact of our actions.

Every breath we take, every heartbeat that resonates within us, carries the potential to leave an indelible mark on the world.

The finite nature of our existence is not a cause for despair but rather a catalyst for significance and meaning.

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Thomas Oppong

Making the wisdom of great thinkers instantly accessible. As seen on Forbes, Inc. and Business Insider. For my popular essays, go here: https://thomasoppong.com