Tim Urban over at the Wait Buy Why blog is a hilarious genius. (He’s also rather profane. So click over only if you don’t mind an F-bomb or three.) Tim wrote an absolute mind trip of a post called “Your Life In Weeks.” It’s a visualization of how much time we actually have on the earth to do what we value. And then in an arguably EVEN MORE shocking follow-up post called “The Tail End,” Tim drops some serious truth on us about the difference between life activities that are evenly distributed and those that are not. When it comes to number of winters he has left, Tim has plenty because there’s one every year and there has only ever been one a year. But when it comes to relationships, Tim’s stats tell a very different story:

“When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. If I lay out the total days I’ll ever spend with each of my parents—assuming I’m as lucky as can be—this becomes starkly clear. It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end. It’s a similar story with my two sisters. After living in a house with them for 10 and 13 years respectively, I now live across the country from both of them and spend maybe 15 days with each of them a year. Hopefully, that leaves us with about 15% of our total hangout time left.”

So, back to the question. “When are we getting together next?” Ask your siblings. Ask your parents. Ask your closest friends. AND THEN PUT SOMETHING ON THE CALENDAR. Otherwise, it just won’t happen. What could be more important? Seriously?

Source: Inspired by Tim Urban at Wait But Why

Have you asked this question? How did it go? Do you have advice for how best to ask it? PLEASE RATE! AND WRITE A REVIEW (in the comment box below)!