Someone once observed that each animal, large or small, has about the same number of heartbeats over its lifetime. Animals with shorter lifespans have hearts that beat very quickly, 450 times a minute in the case of a hamster. Hamsters don't usually make it past 3 years. Sorry hamster lovers. Long lived animals like whales, than can live to 80, have hearts that only beat around 20 times a minute. A lifetime can be measured in a lot of ways, but it's about a billion heartbeats for most of the animals on the planet.
The exception to this rule of thumb is us. About a billion heart beats would take us to 31 years of age. We get around 2.2 billion heartbeats. So think how lucky you are and don't waste them. And think how many of us are living on borrowed time.
I've posted this before but it'll stand posting again.
This has been kicking around for ages in my head so I thought I'd try and get it down on paper. Possibly a waste of everyone's heatbeats.
David Millington
Nottingham
4th November 2012
The exception to this rule of thumb is us. About a billion heart beats would take us to 31 years of age. We get around 2.2 billion heartbeats. So think how lucky you are and don't waste them. And think how many of us are living on borrowed time.
I've posted this before but it'll stand posting again.
This has been kicking around for ages in my head so I thought I'd try and get it down on paper. Possibly a waste of everyone's heatbeats.
Heartbeats
Only so many heartbeats,
Leaking like water from a drum.
Strewn like confetti over damp cobbles,
Or carried like blossom on the breeze.
Stamped into the brickwork of that midnight doorway,
Scorched into the table by the unfinished drinks,
Spinning like leaves in the rain-tide of the river,
caught in the station’s eaves with pigeons and announcements.
Yours and yours and yours all mixed with mine,
fading away until in a hundred years
all that’s left of us will be the echoes in your child’s
breast.
