On my limited heartbeats

I have been reading a book recently that makes the point that with each breath, we are dying a little bit more. This is based on the idea that each person and animal is pre-programmed with a certain number of breaths, a certain number of heartbeats and therefore, a predetermined life span. Essentially, with every heartbeat we use up one of our finite supply.

You could view this as a rather bleak perspective on things. It is definitely a “glass half empty” view of your lifespan. On the other hand, thinking about it does tend to make me appreciate the “live each moment” school of thought. It also makes me wonder how I can readily justify the increased heart rate that rigorous exercise necessitates. I have always held to the philosophy that ”you should only run when you are being chased”, but most medical evidence would seem to encourage me to liberally expend my limited supply of heartbeats in the sweaty and not particularly pleasant, pursuit of an extended lifespan. Added to that is the fact that I have heard many stories of people who died suddenly while engaged in rigorous exercise. I don’t believe that I have ever heard of anyone who died of oversleeping. I don’t know of anyone who has suffered from a fatal recliner overdose. I have never read about any communities plagued by a cluster of deaths caused by a mysterious outbreak of afternoon naps.

Nonetheless, I suppose that for the foreseeable future, I will have to give my doctor the benefit of the doubt and puff away my precious supply of breaths while engaging is regular exercise. After all, he knows all Latin words for all the things that can go wrong with me and I do pay him an outrageous amount of money for his multi-syllabic advice.

Tomorrow, I will indeed fritter away a few of my precious heartbeats during a vigorous walk.

Today, I will live in the moment.
I will take a nap.