the different views of how we want to spend…
Keyword time the different views of how we want to spend time are partially driven by how much time we think we have left. When time is perceived as open-ended the goals that become more prioritized are those that are focused on gathering information or on experiencing novelty or on expanding knowledge. When time is perceived this constrained, the high priority goals will be those that can be realized in the short term and provide emotional meaning such as spending time with family and friends.
— from Time
In the book
There are, the old teachers said, basic laws governing time, and the first is that it can be neither created nor destroyed — you cannot manufacture a single extra minute, only choose what to do with the ones you are given. How you even see time quietly shapes how you spend it; but however you see it, the plain fact stands underneath: your time here is brief, it is passing as you read this, and within it you still have real options about what to do. Let me make it concrete, the way I finally came to see it from the cockpit. — Time
The finitude is what gives it its weight. It is no accident that when people sense their time is short, their priorities collapse inward to one thing — emotional closeness, time with the people they love. And choosing this family — these particular people, over every other life you might have lived — is not a limitation on your freedom; it is the very thing that makes your life mean something. — Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)