Dear wonderers,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the freeing insignificance of a life span in the greater scheme of the Universe.
It’s true that I’ve been inspired to write these lines by Oliver Burkeman’s Four thousand weeks: Time management for mortals. A philosophical book for the contemporary anxieties if there ever was one – don’t be fooled by the title, it has nothing to do with self-help or time management :)
What stuck with me the most was this image of a human civilization that spans roughly 60 lives of centenarians, linked through a chain of decades passing. If we think about it like that, Ancient Egypt is a few centenarians away.
“We’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.”, says Oliver.
So, to be curiouser and curiouser about our relationship with time, I’ve gathered 3 things to help us:
1.
How Sen no Rikyū, the Japanese tea ceremony, and the idea of enjoying the moment connect:
2.
A bit of basking in serenity with No Time by W. H. Auden
3.
This conversation from On Being — Krista Tippett’s podcast that, for me, is an exercise in meditation and meaningful conversation every time.
Here’s something to convince you to listen to it/read it:
…because the science itself makes clear that there can be these intermediate windows of time — in fact, we’re living in that window right now — when the universe can enjoy order. It can enjoy structure. It can be the home of beauty. It doesn’t last long, on cosmological scales, but here we are. We are these living beings whose bodies are so exquisitely ordered that we can have conscious experience.
What would you add to the list of time-related inquiries?