This is my third and final post on “Meditations for Mortals,” by Oliver Burkeman, a book I loved.
The book is to meant to be read one short chapter each day.
There were too many takeaways for me to share in one post, so over the part two months I shared a bunch of my favorite excerpts, with my thoughts added in parentheses at the of several of the entries, and here are some more…
- It’s more effective to focus intensely during only your peak hours, rather than half-heartedly all day.
- Develop a taste for problems. To face no problems at all would leave you with nothing worth doing; so you might even say that coming up against your limitations, and figuring out how to respond, is precisely what makes a life meaningful and satisfying. There’s a clue to be found in the leisure activities to which many of us gravitate after a workday spent resenting our problems: we play board games, or watch police dramas, or learn musical instruments, or try our hand at cooking new dishes – none of which would be any fun if it weren’t for the problem-solving involved.
- A friend of Burkeman’s vividly recalls the uplifting and energizing moment when, feeling burdened by the endless problems that seemed to get in the way of her doing her job, it dawned on her that the problems were the job. Anyone, or a piece of software, could do her job, if it weren’t for the problems. Her unique contribution lay in her capacity for solving them. (A favorite saying of mine, a mantra that has helped me in challenging times, and which I have written about here more than once: “If it was easy, anyone could do it,” has often reminded me to embrace challenges, the handling of which has been an important part of my success in life.)
- Almost everything that happens, is either a good time or a good story…almost everyone can reel off a few tales in which events slipped out of their control – the weather failed to cooperate, the flight got canceled, they showed up at the wrong address – and either something wonderful happened or, at worst, they acquired an anecdote with which to entertain themselves and others for years to come. (I have reminded myself many times over the years, “This is going to be a funny story later.”)
- Jack King, an Anglican priest from Tennessee, coined the phrase ‘scruffy hospitality’ in 2014. He and his wife enjoyed hosting friends for dinner, and they had a standard checklist they’d run through in the days and hours before guests were due to arrive: ‘Select a menu, complete grocery shopping, mow the lawn, sweep the floors, run the vacuum, clean the playroom… set the table, clean the playroom (again)’ and somehow, someway, pray all that happens before the doorbell rings. Powering through the list made their home more inviting to visitors. But it also subtly dissuaded them from inviting more visitors, because it was so much work. Besides, King started to wonder, wasn’t there something odd about putting so much effort into hiding the daily reality of their lives from the people they called their friends, or with whom they wanted to become friends? You might even define ‘friendship’ as the sort of connection between people that can’t be imperiled by an unmown lawn or an unvacuumed carpet. And so King and his wife made an admirably imperfectionist decision: they’d start inviting friends to dine in their home as it was, and on whatever happened to be in the kitchen cupboards. As he put it later in a sermon: “Scruffy hospitality means you’re not waiting for everything in your house to be in order before you host and serve friends in your home. Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have, not what you don’t have. Scruffy hospitality means you’re more interested in quality conversation than in the impression your home or lawn makes.”
- You can have a hundred tea ceremonies; you could even have all of them with the same people. But you can only have that ceremony, that cup of tea, once. (Being present enhances the quality of each experience, and of life overall.)
- You can probably have a go at launching any project about which you’ve been experiencing self-doubt – and there’s no reason why you can’t be the one to make a fortune, or a long-lasting difference to the world, as a result. The main difference between those who accomplish great things and those who don’t is that the former don’t mind not knowing.
- We feel pressured to do something extraordinary with our lives, or to an extraordinary standard of merit, or in a way that’s applauded by an extraordinary number of people –even though it’s true by definition that only a few people can ever be extraordinary in any given domain. If we could all stand out from the crowd, there’d be no crowd from which to stand out. Why shouldn’t an anonymous career spent quietly helping a few people get to qualify as a meaningful way to spend one’s time? Why shouldn’t an absorbing conversation, an act of kindness, or an exhilarating hike get to count? (This is an extremely powerful concept for me.)
I highly recommend this book. If you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy it.
All my best,
David