How many times have we seen blog posts and research data about how to live the fullest life? I’m sure I have even written about it. Hell, my Life To Do List is a testament to making each moment count. But as I was reading  Steve Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From recently, he referenced a study that got me thinking. He wrote:

“[...] a cow, which is roughly a thousand times heavier than a woodchuck, will, on average, live 5.5 times longer, and have a heart rate that is 5.5 times slower than the woodchuck’s. As the science writer George Johnson once observed, one lovely consequence of Kleiber’s law is that the number of heartbeats per lifetime tends to be stable from species to species. Bigger animals just take longer to use up their quota.”

That’s why I have begun to try to experience new things as often as possible. That is why a few weekends ago I took a tour of a few New York City “landmarks.” Better yet, they were Seinfeld landmarks. I must say, I have had a few burgers here in the city, but the burger from Tom’s Restaurant (Monk’s on Seinfeld) was fantastic. The cheese was melted on the meat and the fried seemed like they were not from a bag.

It is interesting to me that based on Kleiber’s law that on average, all of our hearts beat the same amount of times. So now it is simply a matter of deciding how to use eat one.

Will you spend yours fretting about doing the dishes or making a dream happen? Or course I know you have to do the dishes and you have to take a shower and do your hair. That stuff happens. But think about how much television you watch. Seriously, that is time that could be used on life. On living.

You have a finite amount of heartbeats but how you use them is your choice.

(flicker photo via gfpeck)