Life is short, then long. The universe–and long meetings—have a strong way of drilling that into us. I was on a call with a close friend studying in the UK. As predictable of any normal gen z interaction would begin, our self-esteem was all over the place: me mulling over a non-existent beard, and his flourishing as far as gravity could care. It had been 6 months since we last spoke and we explored life’s existing fundamentals and its new-found epiphanies.

Life is short. One day you have a high school friend, the next an engineer. Days fly away, so do friends. They appear through hazy thoughts and you dash to Whatsapp and iMessage, only to see their numbers greyed out. That’s the memory they’ll leave—a ghost number. While this wasn’t a fear I have for my friend, we teased about it.

It was refreshing that this call acted as a pleasant reminder of dreams we, young folk, aspire to. A good number of which we chase with work and academia, some which continue to gather dust and a decent number of which we accepted were just one-time buzzers. Oddly enough, this conversation reminded us of the sacrifices we would have to make, or are already making. Sharing in some of these vulnerabilities, like a hurting social life, set us up for a more conscious future. Not that we will be immune to it, just that we will be able to give it the most appropriate label for the shortcoming it is.

Life is long. There’ll always be someone muting themselves while speaking on Zoom. Some things in life creep in to remind you of how long life is, like quarantine and unreplied emails - rarely does it appear as a salvation but perhaps more time to pore through novels gathering dust, drown in Netflix or feign modesty by replying “I’m good” to contacts sending annoying template greeting messages. On the call, we mused over both of our friendships and how long they promise to be.

I had pushed the call for half an hour since I had to attend to a work engagement. My heart sank that this call had to bear the scar of my work schedule. But for the brief period, it was amazing to explore life’s fundamentals and its epiphanies. Life is short and life is long.