The question about finitude and time is not abstract: it crosses us every morning when the alarm clock rings. We live knowing that time is running out, although we almost always forget it. That tension between knowing that we are finite and acting as if we were infinite defines a good part of our existence. Do we live or just spend days? The honest answer is that we do both, but not in the same proportion.
To spend days is to let yourself be carried away by inertia. It means meeting schedules, responding to messages, resolving emergencies and arriving at night without having chosen anything that happened. Time then becomes a succession of boxes that are crossed out: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It's not that those days are worthless—working, caring, resting is also living—but they are more like surviving than living. Routine protects us from the vertigo of freedom, but it can also numb our conscience. We spend days when time slips away without us having decided where.
Living, on the other hand, does not require extraordinary feats or trips. Demands presence. To live is to notice that this moment will not be repeated; choose, even in a small way, what we do with it; look at who we have before us; Say what matters before it's too late. Finitude is not just a threat: it is what gives weight to our decisions. If we had infinite time, nothing would be urgent and perhaps nothing would be valuable. Knowing that we will die should not paralyze us, but rather help us distinguish the essential from the accessory.
However, two traps should be avoided. The first is to believe that living means filling every minute with productivity or intense experiences. That obsession with making the most of time can become another way of not living it: an anxious race against the clock. The second trap is the opposite: thinking that any routine is a betrayal of life. It is not. Finitude does not ask us to be constant heroes, but rather attentive people. Sometimes living is simply eating without looking at your phone, listening without interrupting, walking without rushing or accepting a gray day without guilt.
The question “do we live or just spend days?” It is not answered once and for all. It is answered every day, in small choices. There are seasons in which we only spend days, and it is okay to recognize it. But the awareness of finitude invites us to wake up from time to time: to ask ourselves what we are doing with our time, to whom we are dedicating our lives, what we are putting off for no reason. It is not about living with fear of death, but with lucidity about life.
Perhaps the answer is this: we spend days when time drags us; We live when, even within the routine, we choose to be present. Finitude is not the enemy of life: it is its condition. Therefore, rather than asking how many days we have left, it is advisable to ask how we want to live in the ones we have.
Credits: I used Google Translate.
I took the image with my Samsung Galaxy A16 phone.