Hero Half-Life

Some say, “Never Meet Your Heroes.”

Yes, humans are flawed, and they’ll never meet our idealized expectations.

However, I would argue that it’s more painful to find out that you’ve lost the chance forever.

I know because I just discovered that SIX of my heroes have died in the past 5-10 years.

I was updating my bucket list, and I decided to add a few people I’ve been meaning to connect with since college. Googling led to one obituary after another, and I finally gave up. Too depressing.

The Tail End

Tim Urban wrote an extensive article on this subject. The stat that still shocks me is that by the time a kid turns 18, a parent has already spent 93% of their time together. The remaining 7% happens for holiday gatherings and summer vacations.

The paradox is that you think you have decades of time ahead, but the actual aggregate amount of time left is in the single digits.

Half-Lifes

There’s a term in science called the half-life. It’s defined as the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive material to decay into something else. Some materials last forever (e.g., uranium), and others decay quickly (e.g., Oxygen-15 and other isotopes used for medical scans).

I’ve been thinking about this ever since finding out many of my heroes were dead, many of them way earlier than expected (early 50s). My assumption is that they were all younger and would live longer. I thought I had 30 years easy. In reality, the half-life was 10 years. And then another half-life of 10 years.

To those who aren’t good with math, I’ll summarize. Life is fucking short.

Do This Now

Now, at age 45 and looking around at those who remain (mostly in their 50s and 60s), I realize I have less time than I think to make it happen. The optimist thinks I have decades. The reality is that if I don’t make it happen by 2030, all bets are off. Too much risk that life happens and another hero becomes an obituary.

I realize this is a bit morbid to think about. However, I lost both my mom and biological dad a month ago. I lost my sister-in-law in her late 30s two years ago. And one of my good friends in Oklahoma has a brother-in-law battling stage 4 cancer at age 38. If anything, it’s just being a realist.

We all have less time than we think! If a person matters, make the time now to avoid regret later.