I’ve been revisiting some older pieces to see which still feel at home in Shaping Life. I first published this one a couple of years ago, inspired by an idea I encountered in Jodi Wellman’s book You Only Die Once and her TEDx talk. It’s an idea I still think about, so this felt like one worth bringing back. I’ve made a few small edits, but otherwise left it much as it was.
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? And 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?
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 me 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 somehow 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.”
• • •
In her TEDx Talk, Wellman urges us to ask three questions right now.
1. How many Mondays have you got left?
Wellman has a free resource to help us calculate our 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 actually wants us to get that granular and to quantify our lives with countdown timers.
“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 you happen to get the word that tonight is the night you kicked the bucket, 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.”
She coined the term “pre-grets” — this exercise of anticipating the things we might regret before they become permanent plot lines in our lives.
“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. Where are you in this chart?
The first time I saw this chart and heard her talk about it, I was struck by the equal emphasis on living a life of purpose and living a life of fun. Most of the time, we hear the emphasis on purposeful and meaningful living. And her research actually supports this: 40% of people surveyed feel “meaningfully bored.” We seem to be doing ok on purpose and meaning but the zest department could use some help. And only 8% counted themselves as “astonishingly alive.” 😵💫
“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.”
“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.”
• • •
So, back to Seneca’s quote: “Life, if well-lived, is long enough.”
I think Wellman gives us an interesting way of thinking about what “well-lived” could mean. It’s not only a life filled with experiences, or one filled with meaning. She’s talking about a life with some measure of both: width and depth.
Maybe that’s what counting the Mondays does. The number itself isn’t really the point. For me, it’s the sudden awareness that there is a number.
We can continue being, in Wellman’s words, “impressively functioning zombies” or living “in vivid color with depth and width.” I’d bet the latter would be long enough, indeed.
✴️ I’d love to hear from you:
Do you feel your life is wide enough? Deep enough? Which could use a little more attention?
Talk soon,
Lou
Lou Blaser exchanged PowerPoint decks for essays and has yet to regret the trade. She writes Shaping Life, where she follows her curiosity through books, conversations, films, and whatever else refuses to leave her alone.
When I started 1000 weeks the idea was to publish 1000 newsletters by publishing once a week until I am in my 90s. Since starting my newsletter I have missed quite a few weeks because more important or more essential things have come first. I have a commitment to myself and my followers but not at the expense of my expanded purpose and meaning of life. I can always publish more than once in a week but I can never get back a moment in time. I have found that it makes me think like this more often knowing my time is finite.
I am blown away by your article! Thank you for the feature... and thank you also for reminding me to get on out there and LIVE LIKE I MEAN IT. I need to read these words regularly!