How the Birth of a Child Transformed My View of Time

My fear of death

I tend to fear death. I didn't use to be. It only started when I got older and wondered more and more how much more there was to come in life. Every year the math got scarier and scarier.

I looked at statistics and found out that men in Germany live to be 78.5 years old on average.

Source: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/_inhalt.html

After that, I would still have just over thirty years, which would mean that I had already well over half my life behind me. This calculation frightened me. It is probably not healthy at my age to think about your own death. As long as you enjoy living as much as I do, death seems unfair and frightening.

Maybe in later life, I will develop a more relaxed attitude towards my own mortality, but right now, I can't find anything positive in the thought of one day ceasing to exist.

The news of the birth and what then happens to me

When we got the news that my cousin had given birth to her child last night, we were, of course, happy about it, and the whole family-Whats-App-group freaked out.

I was very happy for my cousin and didn't even think that this event could have anything to do with me. Well, it really didn't, but a few hours later, I started to relate it to me anyway.

I imagined the steps that this child was about to take, steps that I had long since gone through.

He will enter kindergarten at about three years of age, primary school at six years of age, and later on, he will go on to a secondary school.

After that, it might follow an apprenticeship or a study. At some point in between, it will become of legal age.

At this point, I could not help but look back on my own life. Looking back, it is hard to believe what has already happened and how long the individual phases of my life lasted, which today are only a pale memory.

I continued to imagine the potential path of life of this new person and calculated each time how old I would be when the boy reached the respective stage.

All of a sudden, I realized that even his thirtieth birthday is still within my life expectancy. That shocked me. When I used to look into the future and saw that statistically speaking, I only had something more than thirty years ahead of me, it seemed incredibly short. But this new perspective changes everything.

By the time a person reaches thirty years of age, he or she has experienced, seen, learned, and witnessed an incredible variety of things.

Thirty years is enough to grow from a helpless baby to a person who has a family of his own, a career, and a massive wealth of experience.

So when I look at it that way, I don't just have thirty years ahead of me, but a whole life.

If I were also lucky enough to live to an above-average age, I might even see the child's fiftieth birthday. I cannot even imagine what that means. I can't think fifty years into the future.

All I have realized is that I have more life ahead of me than I thought until now. Thirty years is just a number that doesn't mean anything. Calculating what percentage of your potential life span you have already lived is entirely misleading. I have made this mistake again and again and became more and more afraid.

Thinking about this newborn child has put my outlook back into perspective.

Just a few days ago, I thought: Oh God, I have maybe thirty years left. That is so damn little time.

Today I think: "Oh my God, I have at least thirty years left. I wonder what else is in store for me. There is so much potential.

Conclusion

They say that children are the hope of humanity. That's true. But beyond that, they can also give hope for oneself. This new child shows me that I had been thinking utterly wrong about the rest of my life.

I am happier and more grateful today than I was yesterday. And I am less afraid now. Thank you, little person.