Hello everybody,
This week we’re looking at limit, finitude, and death with Oliver Burkeman.
You can find the companion article here: The dancing monk: Why mature people don’t chase total control
We forgot to do the “big shop” last week.
The busy combination of life and laziness meant we couldn’t get to the supermarket, and sheer negligence meant we didn’t place an online order. And so, the fridge is looking pretty sad: half a pint of maybe-okay milk, a few packets of poorly sealed cheese, a wilted and yellowing broccoli, and a depressingly large array of out-of-date ready meals.
It’s dinner time, and it’s feeding time at the four-person zoo. Freddie, my eldest, begs for his favorite pasta. Sorry, Fred, the pesto has grown a mold colony. Charlie, my youngest, asks for pizza. Oh, sweet, sweet Charlie — the pizza in the freezer expired two Christmases ago.
And so, we open the Larder of Desperate Dinners — freeze-dried cheesy pasta, vacuum-sealed noodles, a pie in a tin. “Right boys, pick what you want.”
We all love a Desperate Dinner night. Of course, foods that could survive an apocalypse are often jammed full of delicious, dangerous chemicals. They have as much nutritional value as their packaging. But it’s the privilege of a newsletter writer to extrapolate general points from tiny occurrences (and the privilege of the newsletter reader to roll their eyes):
I think the reason we love Desperate Dinner nights is that our choices are so limited. We have only a cupboard to pick from and a few old favorites on offer. It’s comforting when you commit to a limit.
This week, we see what philosophy lies inside that larder.
Thrown into a sandbox and left to play
The philosopher Martin Heidegger once argued that we are each thrown into existence. “Thrown” is a perfectly earthy word. It imagines the bodily, physical limits of our daily life. You throw a ball. You throw a slab of meat onto the butcher’s board. We are thrown into existence.
This week, I spoke with bestselling author and philosopher Oliver Burkeman. There is very much an earthy thrownness to Burkeman’s books. They place mortality center stage; they rarely go a chapter without a neon-lighted memento mori popping up to tell you that it’s not long until you die. What Burkeman does so well is to remind us of just how human we are. He explores the daily limitations of our minds and the frustrating weaknesses of our bodies, and he says, “It’s okay. We’re all like that.”
Sometimes, that’s all you need to hear. You need to be told that all of those weeping nights, invisible failures, and chronic pains are both normal and widespread. But Burkeman does more than that. He changes the narrative on limits and adds a silver lining to the mortal cloud. This is how he put it:
“I think what I'm doing is more what I call finitude, the state of being finite. Death is always sort of there in the background, because if it weren't, we could follow every single path we could think of. Every moment that you're trying to decide what to do with the next half hour or grappling with creative work that isn't coming out as well as you'd like, you're confronting your limitations. The more consciously you do that, the more immersed you become in life. There's freedom in coming back home to what it means to be finite.”
There are two elements to Burkeman’s point.
The first is something best explored by Soren Kierkegaard in his work “The Concept of Anxiety,” and that’s the idea of “the dizziness of freedom.” When we think we have unlimited choices – when we think there are thousands of roads to walk – our head spins like Looney Tunes. We are overwhelmed by choice, dithering and dallying through all the options until we end up doing nothing at all, locked in analysis paralysis.
The second point, though, is that when we give up — when we stop trying to be everything to everyone or trying to live 100 different lives — we can live our life more fully. We can commit to the life we want to live. We can start saying things like, “No, that’s not how I want to spend my evening, thank you.” When we accept that we can only spend our time once, we are motivated to spend it more wisely.
A story from my own life to illustrate the point:
Sometime about three years ago, I realized how few weekends I have to spend in a year: 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays. Let’s say ten of those are taken up by family holidays, unavoidable birthday parties, and other unforeseen miseries — then you only have 40 or so weeks to spend. And so, the end point of this calculation was to say, “I want to see fewer friends, more often.” I try to see the same people five, six, seven times a year, rather than lots of people only once. I can say it’s been one of the best decisions of my adult life. With limits comes fresh perspective. Within the narrow parameters of constraint, I’ve found I’m actually rather happy.
IN YOUR OPINION
Another show-stopping, heart-wrenching email this week. I asked about death, so I should have prepared myself. I won’t pre-empt it, but this is such a powerful, evocative reply I can’t do more than paste it in its entirety. In one sentence, Karen had me in tears.
At age 72, I think about death often, both for myself and my loved ones. Life is so fleeting and full of opportunities for death, it is hard to avoid. I lost my youngest son when he was 3½ — death can come at any time. However, I plan to live a full, healthy (mental and physical) life until age 125.
I don’t dwell on it – just wonder about what will happen and I am in no hurry to die, as I find life, even with its challenges, to be full of wonder and mystery. I want to live long enough to see great-great-great-grandchildren, what happens with climate change, and what new inventions will come about.
Since I think of the universe as consciousness, with everything being its attempt to experience every possible thing it can, I am not afraid of death. I just don’t want to miss out on anything!
Thank you, Karen, and to you all, for sharing so much of your life and soul with me. These messages alone make it all worthwhile.
Next Week: Next week, we’re exploring thought experiments with Dave Edmonds and so I’m asking:
What book, TV show, or movie offers a great philosophical thought experiment?
Send me your thoughts via email or comment below.
MINI READING LIST
David’s introduction to thought experiments on The New Statesmen.
Mary’s Room - one of the most popular thought experiments, on Big Think.
RESOURCES
This newsletter contains my reflection on the topic at hand. Here is a list of the material shared in this email, as well as extra content about the topic that I've shared on my other social platforms:
The companion article inspired by my conversation with Oliver Burkeman
My short video about prioritizing our 4,000 weeks of life, featured on Big Think’s Instagram page
The full, unedited audio interview with Oliver Burkeman:
Jonny is the creator of the Mini Philosophy social network. He’s an internationally bestselling author of three books and the resident philosopher at Big Think. He's known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun.
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You had me at The Larder of Desperate Dinners…
The poll on "How often do you think about death?" - involves a somewhat skewed population, ie of people who are interested in philosophy. I imagine such people think about death a GREAT deal more than the average. And in many ways, it is the only thing worth thinking about...