One lives as one can.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Of this entire wonderful read, a quote from Carl Jung on page 227 comes back to me most often:
One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way…[just] the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being itself when you put one foot in front of the other.
I listened to Burkeman read the Audible version of Four Thousand Weeks during the first few long drives I took around the Virginia countryside after regaining my driver’s license. I liked it so much, and bookmarked so many soundbites, that I have since bought it on Kindle and started to re-read it. This is a book full of weighty journal fodder, at least for one of Burkeman’s fellow “time management geeks.” From page 26:
You know how some people are passionate about bodybuilding, or fashion, or rock climbing, or poetry? Productivity geeks are passionate about crossing items off their to-do lists. So it’s sort of the same, except infinitely sadder…I’ve squandered countless hours—and a fair amount of money, spent mainly on fancy notebooks and felt-tip pens—in service of the belief that if I could only find the right time-management system, build the right habits, and apply sufficient self-discipline, I might actually be able to win the struggle with time, once and for all.
With such wry humor and philosophical depth, Burkeman opened my eyes on a whole new level to the nonsense that underlies most of my lifelong drive towards productivity, busyness, and outward achievement. Think of this book as the antidote to a culture addicted to Stephen Covey and Atomic Habits. It’s a completely different take. It’s about relinquishing control, and it’s what I needed at this point in my life as I try my damndest to learn how to rest.
Burkeman talks a lot about embracing our own finitude, or mortality. This certainly resonates with me. Unfortunately, I find that my own brush with death didn’t make me some enlightened being who permanently has “a new and more honest relationship with time” (p. 63), as Burkeman supposes it might. I feel, if anything, more pressure from time after tasting my own mortality. I expect fewer than the 4,000 weeks of an average 80-year life, which makes me feel a need to shine even brighter than the average human while I’m here. Where does this idea come from, you ask? I don’t know, but I’m not the only one. You’d be amazed how many cardiac arrest survivors are driven to start nonprofits. I have no idea how they do it but I definitely feel like a slacker for not doing something so brilliant. I’m also envious when an SCA comrade is embraced by American Heart Association, while my own story goes unreported and unread by the reps who interviewed me months ago. When I’m really feeling low, there’s always that most easy stick to whack myself with—you’re not even back to work yet.
New life, new cohort, new imaginary demands. Despite all that I do manage each day, I continue to feel that I’m wasting time that could have been used more productively. This is compounded by fear that I’m wasting tragedy that could have been made useful—or, if one were to believe Facebook, perhaps even beautiful. In this second life, I find it harder than ever to accept time spent on leisure and recovery without visible results.
Four Thousand Weeks has an entire chapter called “You Are Here” that really helped me look at things a healthier way. Burkeman writes, as so many do, about the fact that life is really just a string of fleeting moments, a parade of nows leading to our eventual death. He took it one step further than the cliches, though, by acknowledging how hard it is to actually be in the now. He ends the chapter by pointing out that “living more fully in the present may be simply a matter of finally realizing that you never had any other option but to be here now” (p. 140) I found this supremely comforting. I’m here now. I just am, and it’s all I get. Maybe it wasn’t ever my responsibility to learn how to appreciate it all perfectly; it just is, with or without my appreciation. The inner change starts when I simply notice that fact.
While visiting a friend last month, I complained that being middle-aged and somewhat restricted by illness feels confining—like all the big questions have already been answered. I know where I’m going to live, who I’m going to stay married to for the rest of my life, what my degrees are in, etc etc. Where’s the mystery and adventure going to come from next? There are still a few too many weeks left for me to be done asking questions of myself. My friend proposed that we think about what other questions we can ask. It was a great idea, but I wasn’t feeling inspired. Luckily, a few days later, I was listening to Burkeman and he listed some absolutely fabulous questions that I’ve been journaling about (and living into) ever since.
Five Questions*
Where are you pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?
Where are you judging yourself by standards that are impossible to meet?
In what ways have you yet to accept yourself as you are, and are instead trying to be the person you feel you “should” be?
Where in life are you holding back because you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing?
How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?
*these are my abridged versions—Burkeman’s wording and detailed explanations are on page 220 of the Kindle edition
I hope these questions give you as much food for thought as they did me.
It’s hard to give such a well-written and dense book justice in a short post. Just read it. Or listen to it while driving around and doing laundry, and then feel compelled to actually read it, like I did! Either way, keep putting one foot in front of the other, making it up as you go along, and remembering that nobody else knows what they’re doing, either.
To Lindsey