Mod note: Blast from the Past - "Best of Eddie". This one was originally posted in Dec. 2011.
Christopher Hitchens:
"I know what's coming. I know no one beats these odds and it's a matter of getting used to that and growing up and realizing that you're expelled from your mother's uterus as if shot from a cannon towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks. It's a matter of how you use up the intervening time in an intelligent and ironic way."
27,394 days, give or take a couple leap years. 27,394 days. That's the average life expectancy of an American male today. Some get a little more time, many get far less. I suspect I'll fall into the latter category, and I've already spent 15,585 of my days. So odds are I've got about 11,800 days left to live. Or less. Probably less.
We usually don't give much thought to how we spend our time. All of us come in to this world with some time. Some get a hundred years and some don't last a week, but on average we've got 27,394 days on account the day we're born. Then we start spending that time. And make no mistake: we spend it.
By the time you're old enough to vote, you've spent 6,574 days. You want to drink a beer legally in the Land of the Free? That'll cost you another 1,100 days. Before the average college grad holds that precious lambskin, he's down 8,400 days. On the day most people have been taught life begins, they've already got less than 19,000 days left.
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