Being Over 10k Days Old

So, I’m 27. That means that I’ve passed the 10,000-day-old milestone this year.

There was always something about that figure that gave me pause. It’s substantial. Ten thousand days. When you think about all of the days in your life, the sheer number of them can be easily lost among the ‘noise’. Life is complicated, and it’s difficult enough to keep track of a yearly birthday, let alone the massive volume of days that make up one’s life.

I’ve been keeping track of my age in ‘days’ for the last few thousand-or-so. Somewhere around 7.5k days (age 20) I started to tally them all up. It isn’t a hard calculation: Just take your age, multiply by 365 days, then add however many days since your last birthday. It’s just another way of saying how old you are.  

Being an adult had an impact on me, so I started to pay a bit more attention to the ‘number’. Sure, 18, 21, and 25 were all sizable milestones. In my mind, hitting 10k days always seemed important. 

Time is all that we have. Time is the most important form of measurement there is. Time is imbued into everything we care about (and especially what we don’t care for). Humans are mortal, thus, our time is all that we can spend. We personify our limited time into everything around us. Money takes time. Crap, stuff and things are accumulated over time. Projects, work, effort, love, happiness, etc. is always measured across time. We all have a fixed amount of time, so we constantly ascribe time.

I keep track of the number of days because that seems like a better unit of measurement than years. 27 years boils everything down to such a simple number. Ten thousand days, on the other hand, highlights just how long I’ve been around. As of this point, quite a sizable amount (and only growing until I eventually die).

Thinking about one’s number always brings the notion of mortality. The thought of death being imminent. If you think of your age in years, perhaps the thought of death is less prevalent. The same can be said about measurement with days. Personally, I find that my feelings toward death have shifted since I’ve started this measurement tactic.

Death sounds frightening counting up from 1 and only hitting 27. Or 50. 100 seems awfully limiting in a universe with billions, trillions and vastly larger timeframes. Viewing a life in the ‘thousands of days’ method gives it a bit more context. A bit more weight is applied. Telling someone they have been doing something for a thousand days has far more impact than ‘3 years’.

Perhaps it’s just my mentality toward it all that leaves me thinking this way. Here’s to the next 10,000 days (hoping that I make it far beyond that point in my life).