What is a life well lived? Our lives are often measured linearly in time. Time and attention are our most precious resources. Yet, we don’t spend much time as a society or often individually reflecting on how we use them.

Instead, we focus on their byproducts, our outputs and achievements. We often focus on the positive reinforcements our achievements are given through awards and “congratulations,” from our friends, family, and strangers. Yet, many of us have achieved only to experience the fleeting sense of joy when we arrive at our goal. Then, we look for the next goal post.

We use phrases like “wasting time,” but what does it really mean to waste time? If time is a measurement of you, would you waste your self?

Right before the pandemic, I found myself in a room full of world renowned longevity scientists. It was the last group event I attended before lockdown. Prior, longevity was a field I had met primarily through Silicon Valley elites who wanted to live forever. They were quite obsessed with the idea pouring money into startups, attention into research, and novel treatments into themselves. The HBO hit series Silicon Valley even mocks this phenomena through the billionaire tech executive’s “blood boy” whose youthful blood infusions based on his age, conscious consumption, and activity levels may questionably lead to a IV-transferable increased life span in him.

This fixation on life extension contrasted the Buddhist monk’s practice of death meditations: A practice to remind us that death can strike at any time creating a sense of conscientiousness in every moment, in every breath. Ironically, practicing the latter lends itself to reframing time conceptually in a way that seems to extend it as a resource by bringing what matters into focus. What matters to you? Who matters to you?

As I sat around this room of longevity scientists, before all of our lives would change in ways we could never have imagined a year ago, I learned their definition for longevity: It is about adding life to your years, not years to your life. They taught me that a baby born in most of the developed world today will live until 120, but in the United States 105. Yet, neurodegenerative diseases like early-onset Dementia and Alzheimers are seriously on the rise. COVID-19 now is also revealing links to brain disorders likely increasing the rising trend of neurodegenerative disease. In the midst of declining brain function and longer lifespans, the questions becomes more punctuated: How do we add life to our years?

The United States is roughly 5% of the world’s population and consumes roughly 50% of the world’s pharmaceuticals. The focus is on fixing problems with a pill, rather than preventing them in the first place. There seems to be a pill for everything in American culture.

A wise man, Richard Leider, poised the question, “What if you could take a pill and add years to your life? Beyond extending your life, it would also significantly reduce your chances of Alzheimers, cancer, diabetes, and coronary artery disease? Do you take it?”

My head spins. I picture price tags beyond comprehension, and a dystopian sci-fi reality where quality of life is bifurcated across the lines of gross socioeconomic inequality. To perhaps both your disbelief and my own this pill isn’t available exclusively to the tech billionaires with concierge longevity doctors and experimental treatments. It isn’t subject to the price manipulation of big pharma. It isn’t even dispensed by a doctor’s pharmaceutical prescription. Most surprising is the cost: It is free.

The pill is purpose.

COVID19, like any disaster, is a relationship accelerator. The pandemic has disrupted our relationship to our selves and our lives. It makes clear who and what matters, and perhaps more importantly who and what doesn’t matter. People’s online searches are trending, “How do I find meaning in life?” and “"What’s my purpose?” Simultaneously, our lives slowed down and our relationships accelerated: Collectively, the entire world is increasingly reexamining meaning and purpose.

Right now, we have a powerful choice: We can avoid pain or face it.

Much of our current pain is marked by the loss of past relationships to our selves, others, and the world. We avoid pain by turning to distractions. These distractions can take many forms — substance (ab)use where we see the consumption of alcohol and marijuana spike sharply throughout the pandemic, but so has time spent on devices that deliver digital heroine in the form of dopamine hits through notifications and likes. These behaviors that can easily turn from a tool to habitual avoidance from pain. They don’t remove the pain which we all must eventually process and feel to move past. Instead, they numb the pain to be paid as an increasingly larger future debt. It is a similar pattern to the United States debt bubble. Eventually, the pattern leads to an overwhelming collapse, or it must be faced and paid.

We can turn towards pain. We can choose to feel the pain fully and morn the loss as part of the process in revealing purpose: What and who matters to you? It is a powerful choice. We can continually focus our attention on what matters and give ourselves to it in the form of time.

We will all die — we don’t know when, but death is certain. As we live, we increasingly have less time. Who and what matters? What and who do you share your precious self with in your life?

Materials:

This piece is a limited edition of 100 metal prints. Dye is infused directly into metal for a long-lasting, intergenerational, quality printing process. 16 by 20 with quarter inch floating hardware attached to back