Number Our Days by Barbara Myerhoff takes up the subject of death and dying in the final years of her own premature demise, written from the point of view of an anthropologist working with elderly people on the U.S. West Coast. She adapted this non-fiction film (1976) into a book by the same title (Dutton 1978). The movie and book are as much about life as death; about what is, not what is not. “To be” instead of “not to be.”
Intellectually nearly every adult, and in some circumstances some children, knows the undeniability of one’s own days being numbered. This finitude is put poetically in the Bible (Psalm 90: 12–15, New Revised Standard version):
So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart.
Turn, O Lord! How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,
and as many years as we have seen evil.
“Know” in one of its meanings is about facts and detail. But a different significance is about personal relationship: knowing a person or place or thing (such as mortality). Languages other than English separate these two senses of knowing with different verbs. So there is less confusion and conflating head-knowing with heart-knowing. For most people, it is rare to walk through day to day life “knowing” that one’s days are numbered. Only when an accident, or a serious health event disrupts one’s steady-state and routines does one get to know and see the limited number of days allotted to one’s place among the living.
Knowing one’s own unspecified but surely finite numbered days can cause a variety of responses and realizations. For some people there is resignation and self-reflection. Others have a more active response; they see this knowledge as a wake-up call to budget the remaining time and resources artfully and live well what each day may bring. Small things can become more intensely filled with meaning. Big things can become deflated of the earlier meaning they held.
It is not only an existential crisis of one’s own that sparks hyper-real, hyper-aware thinking about how dear the taken-for-granted things truly are. Perhaps it is a friend or family member who now departs from health with serious medical condition and faces imminent mortality. Or it could be sparked by one who has already died. Lives of others can cause in oneself a sense of absence and feelings of loss. The power of human imagination should be able to learn this mindset and attitude of appreciation that usually arises from a close brush with mortality. Even without impending death or diminishing number of one’s days, it should be possible to view the surrounding people and places in this way. And yet, until faced with incontrovertible finitude, most everyone tends to carry on with the assumption that status quo will always be as it is at present: dearest people will always be there, cherished natural areas will remain undeveloped by commercial interests, climate will confine itself to historical ranges of weather events, and so on.
In conclusion, developing a grateful heart and paying attention to small details that easily get overlooked is one way to dwell on the present, rather than to be preoccupied in planning what comes next, or repeatedly worrying about past events no longer possible to alter. This advice is not intended as a mindfulness message. Instead, the idea is to know that your days are numbered; knowing this not just in your head, but also knowing in your core, in your heart, and in your view of the world brushed against from one day to the next. Seeing things this way puts things into clear perspective so that small things usually overlooked are amplified and big things are quieted. Each person should be able to cherish their days, not just when they are faced with approaching death.
Food tastes better, the springtime air smells sweeter, conversations with strangers and friends take on greater meaning, and the words written by long-ago authors in prose or verse come alive again. Your days are numbered, so live them that way in full. In Joni Mitchell’s language, “Don’t it always seem to go; That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone” (from Big Yellow Taxi).
CODA: Three other images come to mind in the same vein as the “appreciate it now; don’t regret things after the fact.” One is the expression “shin-ken” (真剣) in Japanese to mean “live sword” (not wood or bamboo practice weapons); the real thing, or “playing for keeps.” When applied to day to day living and decisions to make, this idea means that there are no do-overs; all you have is right here, right now (high stakes; “all in” level of commitment and focus). So make it count when you choose your words, decide on which path to follow, and weigh the worth of something.
The second image comes from theater. “This is not a dress rehearsal. You are in a live performance for one night only.” This is your one chance. There are shades of the Japanese concept of ‘once in a lifetime meeting’, ichigo-ichie (一期一会). Your life is not just in the role of audience or spectator. Whether you are aware of it or not, your actions and words (or your silence and inaction) make you a participant.
Finally, there are the quotes attributed to Woody Allen (“80% of success is showing up”) and to John Lennon (“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”). Mashing these two insights together gives something in tune with the previous paragraph about actively engaging as a participant; not drifting along as spectator.
Putting together the “appreciate it now, before it is gone” of the essay here with the coda, above, something emerges that is as precious as oxygen and equally hard to hold in one’s hand. Given the unimpeachable fact of one’s limited number of days of breath and pulse, rather than to draw a line between life’s peak experiences “on stage” and the rest of the time being “backstage,” the richest meaning comes from readjusting one’s way of seeing things so that the present moment is what matters most; not to ignore history or visions to guide future steps, but that what is savored most and best is right here, right now. And while glib cliches can be discounted for being cheap, they may well carry truth, as does this one: “The past is gone. The future has not yet arrived. But the present is a present to be opened and gratefully to be received.”
