Spring Break
Making the most of your iDeath sentence
by Ethan Mermelstein
Columnists | 3/10/09
Posted online at 12:40 AM EST on 3/10/09
When I received an iPhone as a high school graduation gift, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I thought I had just been handed a new, sexy piece of technology, a new best friend that would serve primarily as a bodyguard eternally shielding me from boredom. I never thought that this best friend would soon force me to contemplate my own mortality and consider the worth of my time spent not only on Earth but also in a liberal arts college that presents a wide range of options for my education.
This past Saturday, as I was riding the shuttle into Boston with some friends I found myself doing something that has become a frequent habit since I've acquired my new best friend: ignoring the friends I'm with and browsing the "free" section of the App Store. Generally, this compels me to download an addictive, time-wasting game that will give me a new excuse to ignore the people who care about me and entertain myself for weeks. This time, however, something different caught my eye-"iDie." From its application description, I was lured into downloading what seemed to be a morbidly dark, tongue-in-cheek, superficial "life expectancy calendar." All I had to do was type (or rather, touch) in my gender and birthday, and I'd be informed how long I had until my "deathday" according to "life expectancy estimates … generated from the United States Social Security Administration's actuarial Life Table from 2004" according to Apple's description of the App.
I'm not a numbers person, and that's most likely why it wasn't until I actually saw the graph-a quarter filled-politely informing me, "Your life is 25.492716853% complete," that my world was flipped upside-down. It's not every day that I contemplate my own mortality. The Brandeis shuttle to Boston isn't necessarily the most cinematic place to assess the worth of one's time spent on earth thus far, but I had no choice. The decimal places in that long percentage I saw on the screen were increasing! The graph was filling up. I was dying by the second and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Of course I never actually thought I would live forever, but actually watching with my own eyes as my life slowly moved to become more and more "complete," I couldn't help but think of what I could do to make it truly complete.
This past Saturday, as I was riding the shuttle into Boston with some friends I found myself doing something that has become a frequent habit since I've acquired my new best friend: ignoring the friends I'm with and browsing the "free" section of the App Store. Generally, this compels me to download an addictive, time-wasting game that will give me a new excuse to ignore the people who care about me and entertain myself for weeks. This time, however, something different caught my eye-"iDie." From its application description, I was lured into downloading what seemed to be a morbidly dark, tongue-in-cheek, superficial "life expectancy calendar." All I had to do was type (or rather, touch) in my gender and birthday, and I'd be informed how long I had until my "deathday" according to "life expectancy estimates … generated from the United States Social Security Administration's actuarial Life Table from 2004" according to Apple's description of the App.
I'm not a numbers person, and that's most likely why it wasn't until I actually saw the graph-a quarter filled-politely informing me, "Your life is 25.492716853% complete," that my world was flipped upside-down. It's not every day that I contemplate my own mortality. The Brandeis shuttle to Boston isn't necessarily the most cinematic place to assess the worth of one's time spent on earth thus far, but I had no choice. The decimal places in that long percentage I saw on the screen were increasing! The graph was filling up. I was dying by the second and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Of course I never actually thought I would live forever, but actually watching with my own eyes as my life slowly moved to become more and more "complete," I couldn't help but think of what I could do to make it truly complete.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Adam Cohen
posted 3/12/09 @ 11:45 PM EST
Great article! Now that I am thinking about it, my life is 25% complete as well! While this is a frightening prospect, I suppose the true answer of how do we spend our time really amounts to what we want to do with our lives and what we think is important. (Continued…)
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