Meditations For Mortals
Four Weeks To Embrace Your Limitations And Make Time For What Counts
by Oliver Burkeman
Summary
Having first encountered this book as an audiobook, I was soon buying myself a hard copy. I wanted to be able to read and ponder it one chapter per day—as recommended by the author.
This book is not a step-by-step guide toward having a more meaningful life, but rather a collection of things to consider about embracing our natural limitations. The author uses the metaphor of life being like being a person in a kayak, born along by a flowing river. We can either fight the current, or we can embrace the adventure.
Author’s Website
Meditations for Mortals - By Oliver Burkeman
Favorite Quotes
“This is a book about…how much easier it gets to do bold and important things once you accept that you’ll never get around to more than a handful of them.”
“If doing everything that’s demanded of you, or that you’re demanding of yourself, is genuinely impossible, then, well, it’s impossible, and facing the truth can only help.”
“To be human, according to this analogy, is to occupy a little one-person kayak, borne along on the river of time toward your inevitable yet unpredictable death. It’s a thrilling situation, but also an intensely vulnerable one: you’re at the mercy of the current, and all you can really do is to stay alert, steering as best you can, reacting as wisely and gracefully as possible to whatever arises from moment to moment.”
“Most of the bridges we worry about never end up needing to be crossed at all.”
“…life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one.”
“I’ve shirked what some might view as my one job in a book like this: explaining which things—which projects, activities, relationships and experiences—make for the most meaningful life. The reason is that in your case, I haven’t much of a clue—and I’m certain it’s intrinsic to the value of any answer that we each arrive at it ourselves.”
Check out other books about embracing our human limitations on my Reading List
