Time's wingèd chariot

I was amused and a little disturbed recently to stumble upon both a couple of life expectancy calculators (here's one) and a page on the marvelously nerdy timeandate.com that allows you to create a countdown to any date, including that one.

Four calculators gave me significantly different estimates of my own appointment with the celestial taxi, but plugging in a rough average allows me to see the (predicted) remaining span in days, hours, etc.

I have to say that the number of days is appallingly small:

But at my back I always hear
 Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.
 

Andrew Marvell, drooling over his "coy mistress," has the answer of course:

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
 Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
 And while thy willing soul transpires
 At every pore with instant fires,
 Now let us sport us while we may,
 And now, like amorous birds of prey,
 Rather at once our time devour
 Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
 Let us roll all our strength and all
 Our sweetness up into one ball,
 And tear our pleasures with rough strife
 Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Ooh, that last couplet has a genius that any author must envy. The whole poem is here.