If humans were born with a deadline?

Would suffering be less, and life be better, if humans were born with a deadline?

For a long time, I thought maybe. If we all came with a fixed expiration - an internal clock counting down from birth - we wouldn’t waste time. No uncertainty. No guesswork. Just a clear path from beginning to end.

But today, on my birthday, I know the answer.

No.

Because certainty removes meaning.

The most reckless people in the world are those with nothing to lose. Now imagine an entire species living under that mindset. Every person entering their final years, months, days, knowing exactly when they will take their last breath.

What stops them from doing whatever they want?

Society functions because people believe in the future. They invest in it. They follow laws, make sacrifices, build things they may never see finished because they assume tomorrow is uncertain. They plan for a life that could be long.

But if humans were born knowing their expiration date, everything changes.

People wouldn’t live better. They’d live differently.

Some would count down in terror, paralyzed by the knowledge of their own end. Others would spiral into recklessness, burning through life with no concern for consequences. Either way, the result is the same: they stop thinking beyond themselves.

And when people stop thinking beyond themselves, civilization collapses.

No one builds for a future they know they won’t see. No one plants trees they know they won’t sit under. No one invests in things that outlive them because there is no “what if.” There is no surprise, no discovery, no hope that maybe they’ll be around longer than expected.

A fixed deadline doesn’t make life richer. It makes it smaller.

People think uncertainty is a flaw in the system. It isn’t. It’s the reason the system works at all.

Not knowing forces us to dream beyond the limits of our own existence. It makes us hedge our bets. It pushes us to build, to create, to prepare for things we might never see.

A known expiration date is a slow death sentence.

An unknown one is life unfolding in real-time.

And the greatest illusion? That certainty would make us free.

It wouldn’t. It would make us prisoners of our own timeline.

Life isn’t precious because it ends.

It’s precious because we don’t know when.