The Mondays We've Got Left

No. 113: Is there enough time left to be "astonishingly alive"?

Roman philosopher Seneca once said, “Life, if well-lived, is long enough.”

Two things come to mind immediately.

One: What is a life well-lived exactly? More importantly, am I doing it? Two: That phrase “long enough” makes me think about time — because isn’t the passing of time a way (the way?) we might measure the extent of its enoughness?

Made this with DALL-E

Jodi Wellman, author of You Only Die Once, opened her TEDx Talk by revealing she has approximately 1,924 Mondays left to live.

“I'm dying. And you’re dying. And we're all dying of the same terminal illness called life.”

Seriously. Do we need this reminder?!

But I have to say, if anyone’s going to force me¹ to think about this, it might as well be Wellman. Her personality is well suited for taking on a topic many of us would rather forget altogether. She makes this not only a necessary conversation to be having. Wellman manages to make the discussion... shall I say wholesome? Not at all morbid or depressing.

Call me crazy. But I feel like this is excellent news. Because remembering that we will die is the secret to a well-lived life.”

She lights the fire that needs to be lit up and pushes that sense of urgency button to live our lives wide and deep — no matter how many Mondays may be left on that dang counter.

Wellman suggests we ask ourselves three questions to stop us from taking our lives for granted and help us live our lives “like we mean it.”

1. How many Mondays have you got left?

On her website, Wellman has a free resource to help you calculate your remaining Mondays. I suggest you go and do it, STAT. It’s wonderfully eye-opening in that “Oh wow, I’ve only got that much left” way.

Yes, she urges us to get that granular and to quantify our lives with countdown timers.²

Temporal scarcity [is the idea] that rare or temporary things are believed to possess greater value. So, framing [something] like our lives with an expiration date makes it much more valuable and precious. The idea of living life more fully just isn't as motivating without the shadow of death showing up to highlight all that we have to lose. Life becomes valued to the extent we recognize its impermanence.

2. If, for some bizarre reason, you got word that you were going to bite the biscuit tonight, what would be in your book of coulda, shoulda, woulda?

Mark Twain was spot on when he said, we're more likely to regret the things we didn't do than the things we did do. And research tells us that regrets can be powerfully effective if we tap into them in advance and then edit our lives along the way to prevent them.

So, we’ve got to ask ourselves, what would we regret not doing? The list is probably going to include some combination of hard, scary, this-is-going-to-make-me-look-ridiculous things. There may even be things on that list that we feel we aren’t “good enough” to pursue. But that’s the whole point of making that list now, isn’t it? So we can do something about them?

We don't have to live the version of our lives that's riddled with regrets in the making. With the Grim Reaper in mind, we can take action on the lives we really want to be living. And we can cross the potential regrets off one by one be fore life calls it curtains on us.

3. In this chart, where would you plot yourself today?

From Jodi Wellman’s TEDx Talk

There are two ways to look at our overall well-being, Wellman explains. One is through the lens of hedonic happiness (the x-axis), which is about feeling good. The other is through the lens of eudemonic well-being (the y-axis), which is about doing good. And she proposes that with these two branches of well-being, we can calibrate and deliberately widen and deepen our lives.

We make our lives wider when we stuff them with vitality, expanding the breadth of the fun, the hedonic pleasure, all the experiences life has to offer.

But we all know that focusing on living a fun life — a “wide life” — isn’t enough. At some point, it will all seem empty and pointless. Shallow.

We make our lives deeper when we infuse them with meaning. […] This eudemonic dimension of well-being includes doing what we do best, using our talents, helping, giving, and making meaningful connections with other people. Getting in touch with something bigger than ourselves.

Interesting bit: Wellman’s research revealed about 40% of people feel “meaningfully bored.” We’re doing ok on purpose and meaning but lacking in the zest department. And only 8% counted themselves as “astonishingly alive.”

• • •

So, back to Seneca’s quote: “Life, if well-lived, is long enough.”

Wellman, I think, gives us a strong blueprint to start with. No matter how many Mondays we may have left, we must carpe the diem, as they say. We must make the shifts now — like, right now, no Monday to waste! — so that we can live the life we would be proud to reflect on at checkout time.

We can continue being “impressively functioning zombies” or living “in vivid color with depth and width.” I’d bet the latter would be long enough, indeed.

🏷 Best Version of Ourselves

💭 muse

“You don’t need more time. You just need to decide.” — Seth Godin

👤 a midlifer in profile

Meet Gen X’er Shawn Fink.

Shawn says she is a misfit in many areas of her life: traditional careers, family values, religion, and spirituality. She is married with twin daughters and is very much looking forward to becoming an empty nester and all that she’ll get up to doing with all that time!

Read the rest of Shawn’s profile here.

🍹 reader shout-out

Big shout-out to WAGO reader,

Kaarin Marx Smith

, a Gen Xer who loves traveling the world and is on a quest to find her place in it. Over at Kaarin’s Substack, she writes about identity, relationships, career, life, and, of course, travel. Cheers! 🥂

💬 last word

You know, I may have landed just to the left of that “astonishingly alive” quadrant. I may be needing to work a little on the joie de vivre side of things.

Where are you in that quadrant?

Here’s to an easeful week ahead.

Cool beans,
Lou Blaser

1. Just joking. 🤭 Being a student of Stoicism, I actually think about Memento Mori often.

2. Of course, no one knows precisely when their number will be called. But you get the concept.