Sometimes you wake up, look in the mirror, and wonder where the last five years went. It's a cliché because it’s true. We talk about reflexion de la vida corta—the reflection of a short life—as if it’s a philosophical problem for old poets, but it’s actually a biological reality we deal with every Tuesday afternoon. Life isn't short because we lack days; it’s short because our brains are incredibly efficient at deleting the "boring" parts.
Think about it.
When you were ten, a summer lasted forever. Now? You blink and it’s October. This isn't just you getting older or "being busy." It’s actually a phenomenon often discussed in psychology as the "proportional theory" of time perception. To a 5-year-old, one year is 20% of their entire existence. To a 50-year-old, that same year is a measly 2%. But there's more to it than just math.
The Science Behind Why Life Feels Short
David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, has done some fascinating work on how our brains perceive time. He suggests that time is "rubbery." It stretches and contracts based on how much new information your brain is processing. When you’re a kid, everything is new. The way a bug crawls across a leaf, the smell of a new box of crayons, the weird texture of a gravel driveway—all of it is fresh data. Your brain writes down every detail.
Then you grow up.
You learn how to drive. You learn how to grocery shop. You learn how to answer emails. Once you’ve done these things a thousand times, your brain switches to "power-save mode." It stops recording the details. It says, "I know what a commute looks like," and just skips the file. If your whole week is just a series of "I’ve seen this before" moments, your brain doesn't bother creating memories. When you look back at the end of the month, there’s nothing there. That’s why life feels like it’s accelerating.
It’s not that the clock is ticking faster. It’s that your memory bank is empty.
Common Misconceptions About the "Shortness" of Life
People love to say "life is short" to justify impulsive decisions. Buy the car. Quit the job. Eat the cake. While that’s fun for a weekend, it’s a shallow way to view reflexion de la vida corta. The Stoics, like Seneca, actually argued the opposite. In his essay On the Brevity of Life, Seneca writes that life is long enough if you know how to use it. He argues that we don't have a short time to live, but we waste a lot of it.
We waste it on "busyness" that doesn't matter. We waste it on social media scrolls that leave zero footprint on our souls. We waste it by living in the "next." Next weekend. Next promotion. Next vacation.
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Honestly, the tragedy isn't that life ends. The tragedy is that we often wait until the end to actually start noticing it.
Why Routine is the Enemy of Time
Routine is a double-edged sword. It makes you productive, sure. It helps you pay the bills. But routine is also a time-thief. When every day looks the same, your brain glues them all together into one giant, indistinguishable blur.
Have you ever noticed how a vacation feels like it lasted two weeks even though it was only four days? That’s because you were in a new environment. You had to navigate new streets, eat new food, and hear new sounds. Your brain was on high alert, recording everything. That’s the secret to slowing down the reflexion de la vida corta. You have to force your brain out of its autopilot settings.
The Role of Regret and the "If Only" Trap
We can't talk about a short life without talking about Bronnie Ware. She was a palliative care nurse who spent years talking to people in their final weeks. She eventually wrote a book about the top regrets of the dying.
She didn't hear people saying they wished they had worked more hours. They didn't wish they had a bigger house. The most common regret was: "I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
That’s heavy.
It tells us that the feeling of a "short" life often comes from a lack of agency. If you spend forty years doing what your parents wanted, or what society told you was "successful," those years will feel like they belonged to someone else. They won’t feel "lived." This is where the emotional weight of reflexion de la vida corta comes from. It’s the realization that time was spent as currency for someone else’s dreams.
How to Actually Slow Things Down
You can’t stop the clock, but you can change how you experience the passage of time. It’s about "density."
Novelty is the Best Braking System. Do something weird once a week. Take a different route home. Go to a restaurant where you can’t read the menu. Try a hobby where you’re guaranteed to be bad at it for a while. This forces your brain to start "recording" again.
The 10-Minute Observation Rule. We spend so much time in our heads—ruminating about the past or worrying about the future—that we literally don't see the world in front of us. Try sitting for ten minutes without your phone. Just watch. Watch the light change. Listen to the background noise. It sounds boring because it is boring to an addicted brain, but it’s the only way to re-engage with the present.
Audit Your "Autopilot" Habits. Most of us have "dead zones" in our day. The hour after dinner where we scroll TikTok. The morning commute where we listen to the same talk radio. Replace one of these with something active. Even a 15-minute walk where you look for three things you’ve never noticed before can change the "texture" of your day.
Dealing with the Fear of the End
It’s scary to think about life being short. Existential dread is a real thing. But there’s a concept in philosophy called Memento Mori—remember that you will die. It’s not meant to be depressing. It’s meant to be a tool.
When you realize the clock is ticking, the "small stuff" loses its power over you. The guy who cut you off in traffic? Doesn't matter. The awkward thing you said in a meeting three years ago? Irrelevant. The fear of failure? Much smaller than the fear of never trying.
Actionable Steps for a More Meaningful Reflection
If you want to move past the surface-level reflexion de la vida corta and actually change your relationship with time, start here:
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- Keep a "Done List" instead of just a "To-Do List." At the end of the day, write down three things that actually happened. "Saw a bright red cardinal," "Had a great laugh with Sarah," "Finished that difficult chapter." This creates a "log" that proves the day existed.
- Schedule "In-Between" Moments. Stop rushing from point A to point B. Give yourself five minutes of "buffer" time to just exist between tasks.
- Prioritize People Over Projects. In the end, we are social creatures. The memories that stick—the ones that make life feel "long" and rich—are almost always shared experiences.
- Change Your Physical Environment. If you work from home, move your desk. If you’re stuck in a rut, rearrange the living room. New visual stimuli trick the brain into paying closer attention.
The reality of reflexion de la vida corta isn't about the number of years you get. It’s about the depth of the moments you’re actually present for. You can live a hundred years in a fog and feel like it was a weekend, or you can live fifty years with your eyes wide open and feel like you’ve lived ten lifetimes.
Stop waiting for a "better time" to start noticing your own life. The "better time" is a myth. There is only now, and it’s already slipping away. Look up. Notice the dust motes in the sunlight. Listen to the hum of the refrigerator. This is it. This is the life you were worried was too short.
Make it count by simply being there for it.