Brevity, as a concept of life, has a lot of meaning. It forces us to think about “starting now”, but also the contrary, “prepare now.” A common example is choosing when to start your company. Brevity, though, is unfortunately more complex than this, and it takes on multiple meanings at once. Brevity, for example, teaches us that our 20’s are not so long, and we should go out and have fun sometimes. Brevity teaches us that, one day, we, too, will be 80 years old, and we should live our lives to the fullest now. Brevity also teaches us, importantly, that something as short as tomorrow could be our last breath, without us even knowing it.

How do you grasp with such a concept, that can point to tomorrow or 80 years from now, with no way to collapse the superposition?

For me, the answer is human. Don’t think about it too much, but think about one thing: “if tomorrow were to be my last day, would I have been happy with how I lived today?”

This doesn’t mean I should go dump my credit cards, it doesn’t mean I should go rob a bank. It doesn’t even mean I should go start my start-up tomorrow.

Instead, it means I should spend an hour of unconditional, fully-focused time with my Nicole. I should go visit my grandma today; drink Armenian coffee with her, bring her flowers, even if we don’t communicate very well from a language barrier. I should go enjoy some time with my mom, brothers, and not have some urge to work while I spend time with them, and give them my full attention. I shouldn’t get upset over stupid things, bad drivers, all things that, in the long run, don’t really matter.

Just imagine you face your maker and your last day you spent constantly worrying about pushing 50 lines of code or doing an hour of classwork.