The Finite Arithmetic of Connection

There is a cognitive glitch in the human brain that protects us from despair but blinds us to urgency. It is the illusion of the infinite. We view the people in our lives our best mates, our siblings, our partners as permanent fixtures. We assume that because they are “there” they will always be available.

But if you strip away the sentiment and look at the raw data the reality is terrifyingly scarce.

We do not live in years. We live in events.

Let’s apply the cold mathematics to a friendship. Say you have a best friend you love dearly. Life has gotten busy. Maybe they moved a few suburbs away or perhaps interstate. You catch up properly face-to-face quality time about four times a year.

If you are thirty-five years old and you both live to be eighty, you might assume you have forty-five years of friendship left. That sounds like a lifetime. It sounds abundant.

But you don’t have forty-five years. You have 45 multiplied by 4.

You have 180 visits.

That is not a river of time. That is a cup of water. You can count 180 visits. You can visualise them. If you fit them all into a single room it wouldn’t even be a very crowded party.

For many of the people who shaped you the school friends, the mentors, the distant family you are not in the middle of your time with them. You are in the tail end. Statistics show that by the time we leave our parents home we have already used up 93% of the face-to-face time we will ever spend with them. The remaining 7% is stretched thin over the next forty years.

If your parents are gone, you know the silence of the zero count. You know the crushing weight of wishing for just one more integer in that column. But for the rest of us, we squander that remaining 7%.

We treat these limited interactions with casual indifference. We sit in the same room as the people we love but we are looking at our phones scrolling through the opinions of strangers. We cancel plans because we are “tired” or it’s “raining” forgetting that we are crossing off one of a very small number of remaining tokens.

We say, “We must catch up soon” as if we have centuries.

The overlooked tragedy of real life is that the last time often happens without a warning.

Rarely is there a dramatic goodbye. Usually, the last time you do something with someone is perfectly ordinary. You walk out the door, you hang up the phone, you drive away. You assume there is a next time. You assume the arithmetic is in your favour.

This should not induce panic; it should induce precision.

It should make you put the phone down. It should make you forgive the petty grievance that caused the silence between you and your brother. It should make you realise that every time you say “I’m too busy” you are gambling with a currency you cannot earn back.

Your time is not a renewable resource. It is a fossil fuel. Every day you burn a little more of it.

Don’t let the tank run dry while you are waiting for the “perfect time” to drive.