Am reading the fascinating biography of Einstein – written by the impeccable Walter Isaacson.
It’s a rather long read. And as I neared the years of Einstein when he left Germany for the US – my eyes quickly glanced to the chapter length.
The bottom left suggested the chapter was 20 mins.
Wow – that’s a lot chapter – the longest one thus far, I found telling myself.
And right then, it struck me.
These were 2 years of someone’s life.
And that someone happens to be Albert Einstein.
And here I was expressing (possibly) frustration that the chapter was 20 minutes long.
2 years of a life boiled down to 20 mins.
And even that seems long.
This is what will happen to all of us.
Our lives will eventually be reduced to a few minutes, a few pages, a few memories, a few incidents.
And while one can feel bad about this fact, the takeaway (yet again) for me was – most things that happen to us in real time don’t matter.
Most of our reactions are misdirected, unnecessary and avoidable.
Most of our emotions are temporary.
Most of our life will not be remembered by our own selves, forget others.
And yet we spend an inordinate amount of time fretting over our situations, our circumstances, how the world is unfair, how we should have behaved, how someone should have spoken to us, how we failed to do something.
In the end all of us will boil down to our own 20 minutes.
And now think –
What will those 20 mins be?
What would you like them to be?
And what will soon seem trivial?