I listened to a podcast episode about death last weekend while I mowed the lawn. The guest encouraged listeners to calculate how many Mondays we have left if we live to the average life expectancy. The calculation is essentially 80 minus your current age, then multiply by 52 to get the number of weeks in those remaining years.
By this calculation, I have roughly 1560 Mondays left to live. This is a smaller number than the host’s by almost 300 weeks. As she thought about her number, and her love of movies, and how she likes to watch at least one new movie per week, she began to feel a little frantic. Does she only have space in her life for 1800 movies? What about movies she wants to revisit? And what about other things she wants to do that aren’t movies? Books, travel, creative projects, time with friends and family?
And I thought, sister, I’ve got even less time than you, and there are definitely more than 1500 books I want to read. And I want to travel, and see my friends, and laugh with my family.
Fifteen hundred weeks seems like a lot, but it is a finite number. I can only fit so much into that time. I don’t want stuff that makes me miserable to occupy much of it.
I pushed the mower over our summer grass and listened to the host’s conversation with a death doula. Like a birth doula who helps an expectant mother usher new life into the world, a death doula helps the dying prepare for the journey out of life. And as the death doula pointed out, because we are alive, we are all in the process of dying.
If I’m lucky, I have 1560 more weeks to enjoy. I may have more than that; I may have fewer. Either way, at the end of it all, I will cease to be alive. I will no longer have the opportunity to do the things I want to do, or live the way I want to live.
This makes me think differently about how I want to spend my time during the finite time I have left. It makes me reconsider what I spend my attention on, in regular life and at work, and what I expose myself to and why. It makes me want to hold everything up against my values to ask, “Does this jive? Does this make me feel proud and strong, like I’ve done something good?” Is this how I want to spend my life? What is the living I want to do?
Butterfly Mind 
5 responses to “Mortality motivation”
Loved it!
We’re not here for long, and it’s great to remember it and keep moving.
I have been thinking a lot about my mortality lately and I DON’T LIKE IT.
Yeah, it’s kind of a bummer.
You published this on my birthday! How fitting.
The book Essentialism also talks about the number of weeks most of us have, according to the average, at our disposal. What I loved so much about that book, is that the author’s guidance isn’t to pack those weeks to the gills. It’s to do much much less, and simply accept that we are human with limited time and energy in this lifetime. Therefore, let go of the pressure, and instead make conscious and loving choices about what takes up your time in any given period of life.
Since reading it, though I have the tendency to want to do a million things all at once, I’ve been much more deliberate about my choices. Even if something sparks an interest, if I’m otherwise engaged, I set it aside to see if I might want to revisit it at another time. As someone that frequently suffers from FOMO, I find that very liberating.
This reminds me a lot of The Tail End post on Wait But Why.
I too have the tendency to do a million things all at once, so I like the challenge to think about it in this light.