How many fishing trips do you have left?

I know you might say none because you don’t fish. This is true, but instead of fishing let’s say summers instead. I once attended a seminar where the speaker gave the example of fishing trips to put life into perspective. At the time of his example he was 50 and he said that if he was fortunate to be above average and lived to be 90 then he probably only had 40 fishing trips left. 40 trips might sound like a lot, but if each trip was only 5 days long then 200 days of fishing was all he had left.

Putting your years into perspective can really help you decide if you’re spending your time with people you love and doing things you really enjoy doing. It can also help you realize that many of the small things that might seem so important at the time are trivial in the grand scheme of time.

The unfortunate post script of this story is that the speaker actually died about 4 years after he gave his presentation. This in itself serves a lesson that he had even less time than he thought he did.