we talked about the variability,

以及不同的
that people have different lengths of time before they die.

生命长度所带来的变数
And we turned to a discussion of the unpredictability of death,

现在我们来讨论死亡的不可预见性
the fact that because we don't know--we can't predict--

我们不知道也不能预测
how much more time we've got,

我们将活多久
we may, as it were, pace ourselves incorrectly.

我们似乎也无法完全掌控自己的生活
You may take on a long-term project and then die

你可能壮志未酬
before you've been able to complete it;

身先死
or alternatively, you may peak too soon and then

也可能过早的功成名就
continue to stick around

而后看着自己
in an anti-climactic way.

慢慢老去
These are bads of life

这种不幸本可避免