It’s completely fair, because no matter how long we live we all will be dead for the same amount of time: forever.
Or as someone else said, you come from nothing and you go back to nothing. And what have you lost? Nothing!
Life is nice and long, except when you get near the end of it, then it seems too short.
What’s too short isn’t life, it’s youth.
But in any case, life’s too short to be bothered with silly discussions like this! 
Being born is the best deal you’re ever going to get. Not only is it something for nothing, it’s the one something that makes any other something have value.
Life could stand to last longer, but youth *definitely *is far too short 
Yes, IMHO. If we lived for a thousand years it would be too short to do everything, see everything, read all the good books and do all the fun things that life has to offer.
Well, for you that might be the case, but I don’t agree. For people in unfortunate circumstances then perhaps longer life would allow for a chance. You can always opt out if you really, really don’t like your life or are suffering too much, but it would be nice to have the option.
Not really that much of an issue in the US…no matter how long someone lived they could only be president for 2 terms, regardless. I suppose there aren’t really any limits to other things, but my guess is that if we did have an expanded lifespan that steps would be taken there as well.
I disagree that our current lifespan is optimal for allowing creativity and genius to fulfill it’s full promise. Think of how things might be if folks like Einstein had lived for centuries.
Optimist.
It is both too short and too long. If you are spending your 90s drooling and in a fog, life has gone on too long. If you spend your 90s active and happy, life might be too short.
What is too short is the number of hours in a day. 4 more and I might get some stuff cleaned up.
I disagree with the main, i.e. those that say “life’s too short.”
“Time” is just a concept in our minds and although humans have been looking to extend their time on the planet since the beginning of their existence, no matter how much we advance in this pursuit, it’ll will always be “short”…as compared to any number of centuries – to use a figure we can more or less grasp – the world’s been around for. As far as I know we are the only living beings on earth that can even begin to grasp the concept of time, never mind death. Every other creature goes about their merry – or tragic, depends on your POV – life-spans, and simply does what it has to do within it. Be it a butterfly or say, an elephant, within their species I think this is one area where nature got it “right.” Meaning that each one lives (forget the concept of “short” or “long” if you can for a second) to full development of their capabilities. As do we.
Sure, I hear many of you say how much more we could accomplish if we could live say, twice as long. More than likely, true…but so what? Because if we did, I’d bet we’d be having this exact same conversation! In short, no matter how long we live for it’ll never be “enough.” As I wrote above, most of us can grasp what a “century” is…perhaps a millennium too. But considering that the Universe’s been around for billions of years those numbers suddenly shrink to the size of a mosquito on a whale. Mind you, I am not even touching “infinity.” So, in that sense, I think we live plenty…as a few decades more or less really add up to nothing.
Depressing? I don’t think so at all. If anything, old-age is…and I am glad there’s a cure for it. Meanwhile, live everyday as your last.
Just how it is.
PS – I just saw what Lemur wrote. He’s exactly right – our lives would have to be infinite or else we’d still be griping about how “short” they are. Though I’m sure we’d find something else to gripe about…such as being bored shitless.
Just wanted to add that a great read on or about this topic is Dr. Sagan’s collection of essays on the brink of (his) death: Billions & Billions.
Fascinating way he had of “putting us in our place.” Cosmic mosquitoes & not much more…
Shelly Kagen gives the topic a good once over, but I can’t recall exactly which lecture it was. The whole series relates though.
I think life can be too short… for those with chronic illness, severe mental problems, anyone tortured in any way that they can’t escape, a heartbreak they can’t get over (like the deaths of their children) or a life spent totally repressed in some way. Those folks may long for any sort of release, like death, that would be infinitely better than the deal they’ve been given now.
For me though, I’m not sure. I’ve spent well over a decade dealing with some of the most tiresome mental issues and awful health (for my husband), so I’ve been on both sides of the track. And now, having been out the “fog” for a while, I’ve yet to reach the point where I think life is too short. However, as I progress again as more normal with a stable life, I’m sure that’ll change. Due to my age, I’m sure, if nothing.
Is life too short? Depends on how old you are, and how close the Boney Man is to getting ya.
One of the things I’ve noticed about the frantic people who think they have to do everything everywhere because “Life is too short” is that they really aren’t happy at the base of it, despite all the fun activities. There’s this underlying existential dread, as if it isn’t enough, as if they fear standing still because they might miss out on something.
I used to worry and fret that I wasn’t doing a lot of ‘normal’ things in life that everyone around me was doing. That I wasn’t active enough, I didn’t rush around trying to accomplish everything. And I beat myself up for that.
Eventually (with age), I realized that I am and have been doing the things I enjoy doing. And that’s enough. Weekend alone, reading, watching movies and playing games? Awesome. Enjoyable. Not something I should be punishing myself for because I should have been doing X. Especially when I point out to myself that I had every opportunity to do X, and chose to stay home and do the quiet things I really enjoy.
Is our lifespan too long or too short? Not really. For some it may be too short, for some it may be too long. Would I personally like to live a longer life? Oh yes, of course. I plan to live into my 90’s. If it were an option, I wouldn’t mind living into my 200’s. But time and age and physical frailties may change that interest, because while I wouldn’t mind living a couple of hundred years at my current age/physical shape, I would have zero interest in living a couple of hundred years as a shriveled up, crippled old man.
Life can be too long, especially if you make the wrong choices.
I realized some time ago that I will never be able to read all of the books that I want to read. That alone is enough to make me feel like life is too short. My current plan is to break the longevity record by living to be 124.
The biggest problem we have with the human lifespan is that we are acutely aware of it. Knowing that we are going to die, and that there is a well-established limit to the longest lives, makes it feel like we are always racing against the clock.
T-shirt seen by me a while back:
“Life isn’t too short; It’s just that death is so damn long.”
The thing about an indefinite lifespan is that our brains wouldn’t be able to remember it. At some point you’d have to forget as much as you remember. So you might live forever but you’d be like Peter Pan, constantly forgetting your past.
And as you age and change and shed your past over the centuries at what point are you still you? And if you can’t change or grow or learn then what’s the point of doing the same things over and over?
But there is the possibility of being able to add memory to your system. Was watching something on the Science channel about in the not to distant future being able to add memory using a machine to brain interface connecting directly into the Hippocampus (this is similar to a half whimsical show by Adam Savage from Mythbusters on living forever). Or, if we really get to the point of being able to engineer people to live indefinitely perhaps we can bio-engineer an non-hardware solution to the problem, if it really is a problem.
You presented this as an argument for it not being too short? It is in fact the complete opposite.
“It’s not the years in the life, it’s the life in the years.”
-Abraham Lincoln
One of my favorite quotes and I think it says it all. Of course we would experience more the longer we lived, but why feel like what we have is “too short”? The fact that it ends at some point is something that motivates me. If it was longer I might just spend more time being lazy/immature… Idk
Dude, I agree. I’m outta whack a lot because my body and mind want to stay awake for 18 hours, then sleep for 8-10. I’ll just make it my life goal to find a way to slow the Earth’s rotation 
Or just drink myself to sleep every night. That seems to do the trick a little easier 
Living forever would include experiencing the heat death of the universe without even a hot-water bottle to hug to your breast in the midst of your lamentations.