“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it……Life is long if you know how to use it.” (Seneca)

When you are young you feel you have all the time in the world, but at some moment intimations of mortality start to occur to you. You ask yourself whether you have done all the things you wanted to do; whether you have used the talents given you to any effect; indeed, whether you have even uncovered them all. You periodically wonder whether you made the right choices, whether you have done any good in the world, or have wasted too much of your life, fruitlessly. These occasional but recurring thoughts can lead to an over-filling of your days to make up for lost time, instead of enjoying reflective contentment. Instead of a golden old age you can end up with no time to listen to the birds in the trees or the wind among the branches, the wonders and good things of this remarkable planet.

Pace yourself.