‘Value time as the greatest gift to humanity.’
This quote is from Sally Radford. She is a Trinidadian geologist. She introduced and taught the first course in oceanography at the Open University in the UK.
When I first read that sentence, it reminded me that few years ago, I had a conversation with myself during which I was wondering if it was better to wish people a good health or to wish them a long life. i.e. What is the best asset that a person could possess - is it (good physical) health or is it time ? Back then, I settled for time, and today I still do ...
What is the better trade :
operate at 90% of your current health for 110% of the time you would have otherwise lived for OR
operate at 110% of your current health for 90% of the time you would have otherwise lived for.
What about:
operate at 70% of your current health for 100% of the time you would have otherwise lived for OR
operate at 100% of your current health for 70% of the time you would have otherwise lived for.
You see where this is going....but what about:
operate at 50% of your health for 100% of the time VS
operated at 100% of your health for 50% of the time.
Maybe I am overestimating my current health level but I think I would still go for 110% or 100% of my time on Earth ...Of course, it will reach a point where I would rather have less time but avoid terrible health-induced suffering....but as per my current state of mind and support system, it would definitely have to be below 50% of my current health level to even start considering at all...
This made me question if in the grand scale of things, maybe what people choose to do with their time has a greater impact on humanity than what they choose to do with their health. Interesting and disturbing thought as in reality, health and life expectancy are of course related.
For some reason, I am very inspired by this quote and there are many things that could be discussed from so many different perspectives.... I have been writing and deleting paragraphs for 30 minutes so I will stop here for today.
What about you, what does it inspire you?