Alive for 10.000 days — Reflections on time, days and life

Today is my 10.000th day on earth — Here is some of what I’ve learnt

Time

Time is peculiar. It constantly moves, and we don’t know if it even has direction, but most of us assumes a linear fashion.

Yet we celebrate the same date on an arbitrary calendar every year that roughly corresponds to earths rotation around the sun. This is our birthday, and we mark it every year with a celebration of some kind (or abstain from it).

These years have 365 days, or 366 every fourth year or so (365.25 on average), to make up for the small difference in time between our 24hour days, and one full sun revolution.

Days

It’s wierd to think about. I’ve been on planet earth for 10.000 days of my life today. When I look back, I see the beginning of a beautiful life. Growing from infant to toddler, to child, teenager and adolescent into a young adult. I look back and see a kid that has experienced a lot, learned a ton, evolved, adapted and changed, and slowly transformed into who I am today.

The reason I’m even here today is because my family cared enough to provide for me and my siblings, and gave us a worthy upbringing filled with joy and happiness. Today I just want to take a moment to appreciate that🙏.

Now I’ve graduated from university, got a job (that I created myself — bragging rights allowed) and recently bought my first apartment, all within the timespan of 10.000 days. But what happened when, how much of it did I experience and was in control over, and what can I bring into the next 10, 20 and maybe 30 thousand days?

Life in days

During the first years of our life, we are more or less useless to the world that surrounds us. Apart from the joy we bring our close family and others who get to experience the pleasant smile of a newborn, a touch of the skin or a feeling of accomplishment for bringing new life to this planet, we don’t really do much but eat, sleep and shit.

We are, in essence, born at some point, and cannot really do much for ourselves nor others for the first 9–18 months or more or les 500 days.

Then we grow slightly more interesting, as we learn to move, walk and talk for the next 500 days. That is a thousand days gone in a swoosh. Most of us don’t even remember anything before our 1000 day mark.

What I think is remarkable is that we need another whooping 4000 days before it gets to a point where we are more in control. Where we are conciously aware of (some of) the consequences of our actions, and should start taking over some of the responsibilities in our life.

In older times you became a man around this age. You “came of age”. In some tribal societies you had to go out and hunt at this point. Maybe not return until you had caught something. In others you went fishing around this age. Nowadays you’re just a shitkid in middleschool.

Still, our conciseness have grown to the point where we can purposefully form our own thoughts, and from this point on it is possible to have some influence of what our life is gonna be, in particular what skills we will bring with us further down the road. It will be another 1000 days before we can actually jump into a car and ster it ourselves (legally).

We are now 16 years old, and our lives starts to unfold. Feelings are stirring up inside, we might have met our first love (some have had their hearts broken already). If you live in a western country, you might now have some control over your future, as your choices about what to study or do now will take you on a path and in a direction. Life after high school is looming in the not to distant future, and your choices in mates, partners, and direction will affect where you are headed.

It is really from around the 5000/6000 days mark that our lives truly begin. We are now more in control (although our brains are still evolving, and men don’t really grasp consequences until a decade later). Our actions from this point on matter, and we start shaping our own lives.

This doesn’t mean that the choices we make when we’re sixteen will haunt us forever. It is fully possible to change directions, switch lines of study and/or careers many times over, but if you start something consciously when you’re sixteen and stick with it, you are likely to become good at it and achieve some level of success, whatever your definition of that term evolves to be.

The next thousand days determine where you are headed next, going from high school to college or university, or even the army.

Myself, I got drafted for a mandatory year in the Royal Norwegian Air Force, ending up graduating as a Sergeant a couple of years later. This was an invaluable experience, and I highly recommend a stint in the army to everyone who’s got the choice (in Norway its not fully mandatory as they cannot accept everyone, and thus some people get to choose whether or not they would like to enlist).

Nearing twenty years of age comes the time for university. The making of new skillsets, time to explore a new city or even country, get friends for life and maybe find a partner if you don’t have one already. These are beautiful days.

I was accepted into my dream university, and this was where my life started to really take shape. At university I was enrolled in a 5-year integrated Master’s degree in engineering, but got introduced to Innovation and Entrepreneurship along the way, and ended up starting my own company in my sophomore year.

Then followed a 5-year rollercoster stint that was both exhilirating and exhausting, as I tried to manage both running a company and getting my degree. These 2500 days were when I reached my highest highs and my lowest lows. The company emerged as one of the second generation startups in the growing Norwegian startup ecosystem, but struggled as we had no clue to what we were doing business wise, and stumbled more than once.

We learnt A LOT, made almost all of the mistakes that is possible to make in the early days of a company and came out on the other side stronger, after nearly going bankrupt a couple of times.

The 3000 days from you’re 18 till 27 are instrumental to the development of your self, where you have the time to explore, create, learn and fall in love, and no matter what happens to you, you will come out stronger on the other side as long as you’re alive.

I have not lived beyond this point yet, and I’m (adjectively) looking forward to it! In my view, even though I’ve lived for 10.000 days, it has only been the last 5000 days where I was in control and in charge — meaning that even though I’ve lived a third of an average lifespan (assuming you are lucky and live in a developed country), I’ve really only lived the last 5000 of them.

That means that I have four times as many livable days left as the ones that I have already consumed (or lived, if you will), and i am grateful for that, as I have much left to learn, explore and experience. Thank you for following my journey, and contributing to make it a better one!