8 years with your kids is short, 8 years with cancer is long, 8 seconds with your hands on a hot stove is very long.

If you succeed in developing a good or at least occasionally enjoyable life, your perspective on life is different than others barely enduring it at all.

In general, it is short in the way of a bell curve. It is long when you are a child or at the end of a long life enduring hardships of old age.