So previously, I tore apart this rather annoying passive-aggressive quote, “never push a loyal person to the point where they no longer give a damn,” and I’ve realised that there was another particularly nonsensical quote flying around the Internet. In fact, it’s been flying around for some time.
Your days are numbered.
Other variations include “our days are numbered,” but it all means the same thing. It’s another case of common sense being given a very visual representation, yet when you break the meaning of the quote down it doesn’t make sense. It’s just stating the obvious, and has to do with human nature and how we perceive our mortality.
Why does this quote appeal to us so much?
As shown in the image above, it creates a very visual image when you say that someone’s “days are numbered.” It implies that there’s this invisible timer that labels every day and goes “Day T – 10, Day T – 9, Day T – 8” and so on. That invisible timer could very well be floating above a person’s head, but if not there, where else?
It appeals to our fear of death and our own sense of mortality. Everybody fears their own death date, and this just heightens that fear by giving a fixed time and date to a person’s demise. Everybody thinks that they have an infinite number of days to live, or at least so many days left that it doesn’t matter if we waste or squander a few.
What does it really mean?
It means that you’re going to die soon, on the surface.
But what it means, by corollary, is to stop wasting time, because every moment matters.
That’s not a bad message to give, but people are often so focused on the fact that they don’t have much time left that they inadvertently waste whatever time they have left by fretting over the fact that they don’t have time left to waste. So it creates a different effect from what is intended.
Why is it nonsensical?
Because given the above definition of “numbered days,” your days are numbered, no matter how you cut it.
Think about it. Let’s say you get afflicted by an incurable disease, like hyperspatial deterioration syndrome. You have only 3 months to live. Therefore, you have 90 days to live, and a timer appears above your head that states “T – 90 days left”.
But even if you didn’t have that incurable disease, or perhaps some impending disaster (like a fragment of Earth’s Moon hitting us), would you live forever? Would it be an eight on its side (the infinity symbol) over your head?
No. It’d still be a number, albeit a much larger number, like say 7,000 or 10,000. So the timer above you would say “T – 9,000 days left.” And that’s still a number. It’s a bigger number, true, but it still means your days are numbered.
What should you do?
Stop using it, for one thing. To be annoyingly accurate, you can say “your days now number in a finite enough amount to scare you” but that doesn’t quite have the punch of “your days are numbered.”
Let’s go back to the intended effect and meaning of the quote. It is meant to convey the message that you should value the time you have, and not squander it.
What other popular quote gives a similar meaning?
Carpe diem.
On first look, it doesn’t sound like it is anywhere near “your days are numbered” since they have positive and negative spins. Yet, at the core, it’s a more optimistic way of saying “your days are numbered.” It’s basically saying “your lives are numbered – in one.” So stop wasting it, and start spending it like the limited resource it is.
Carpe diem
Use this, instead of “your days are numbered.” It’s a more optimistic quote, it actually encourages change, and it’s constructive rather than destructive.
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