November 9, 2024 • 15 mins
Author Oliver Burkeman's new book offers readers a reality check on their own limitations - and reveals there's benefits to knowing how finite life is.
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts tells readers there's a limited time frame to get everything done - and that it's okay to embrace your personal limitations in reaching your goals.
Burkeman says people often distract themselves by thinking about the 'one day' in the future where they'll be on top of things and figure out their lives, but that day often never comes.
"It sort of keeps alive that fantasy where maybe we don't have to feel what it is to be a limited, finite human - which is uncomfortable to face, the truth."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm reading this new book and the very first line
really stood out to me. It said, this is a
book about how the world opens up once you realize
you're never going to sort your life out. Interesting concept,
isn't it. The book is Meditations for Mortals, four weeks
to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts,
and its author as journalist and columnist Oliver Berkman. You
(00:35):
may have heard of his last book. It was called
It was a best sell it was called four Thousand Weeks.
Now Oliver is not your usual self self help guru,
but is here to give us all a bit of
a reality check on just how finite life is and
realistically how much we can get done, and whether we
even need to get any of it done at all.
Oliver Berkman joins me now from London. Good morning morning.
(00:59):
You wrote this book for yourself. Why was that?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Well? I think that's true of pretty much any book
that reports to offer advice or wisdom. You know, it's
really the author trying to work out what they think
and write the advice that they need to hear or
have benefited from very recently. Specifically, I think you know
that what I take to be the topic of this book,
(01:23):
which is how we actually get across that gap from
knowing how we want to show up for life to
actually doing it. That was something that was really sort
of has weighed on my mind for a very long time, right,
you know, having this really strong sense of the work
I want to be focusing on how I want to
be in my relationships, the activities I want to do
in my spare time. You can have some great ideas
(01:45):
about this and just always never quite get around to
actually doing it. So that was what I needed.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Olive always should be clear at the start of this
this isn't self help. In fact, you're a bit of
a skiptic of self help, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, I don't mind the label. I've sort of resigned
to it at this point. I'm not offended if it's
shelved in that section, just happy for it to be
shelved in a bookstore. But yeah, I mean, what I'm
trying to resist in this book, and in the structure
of this book too, if you want to talk about that,
is that risk that I think is so present where
(02:22):
people feel like, Okay, they've got a problem, relationship isn't
going well, or they procrastinate too much, or they're too
anxious about the news headlines, whatever it is. So they
then set out to kind of find some system for
fixing this and for making their lives totally different, and
they have all sorts of ambitions for how perfect this
(02:42):
is going to be, and then it just all goes wrong,
or they put it off for months and never get
around to it, or it never really happens. I wanted
to write a book that was very explicitly about doing
things just a little bit differently, but doing them right
now in reality, in this kind of limited, finite situation
that we find ourselves in as humans doing stuff differently,
(03:05):
right in the middle of the too many emails and
the terrifying news headlines and the imposter syndrome and your
problem with distraction and procrastination and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
You say that we've never lived in more anxious times.
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I mean, I think what lends a lot of the
anxiety to our situation now is just the level of connectivity, right,
the degree to which you can find out about things
that are happening right around the globe. You open up
a social media app, you're you're connected to more genuine
(03:43):
and appalling human suffering than the greatest saints in history
ever even learned about, because you know they lived before
this level of connectivity. I also think that you know,
in our lives, in our personal, our working lives, we're
sort of beset by all these kind of infinite inputs.
There's no limit to the amount of email you could receive,
(04:04):
the amount of family obligations you could see on the
amount of books you might feel you needed to read,
articles you know I needed to catch up on it.
It's just the list just goes on and on and on.
And I think all of that leads us to this
feeling of like, well, we've got to try to get
on top of everything. We've got to try to sort
our lives out, but it's harder than ever to do so.
(04:25):
And in that gap, there's a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Where do you think we're going wrong with the many
ways we're sort of approaching our lives. Why are we
so obsessed about perfecting them or finding the next thing
that's going to make us happy or you know, make
life look perfect.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I mean, I think, to get right down to the
sort of philosophical roots of it, we don't like being finite.
We don't like having limited time on the planet, limited
time in the day, limited control over how our lives unfold,
limited knowledge and understanding of what's going on, you know,
all the rest of it. And so we sort of
(05:04):
comfort ourselves by chain these fantasies of one day in
the future, finally being on top of things, finally knowing
what we're doing, finally being sorted out and organized, because
it sort of keeps alive that fantasy that maybe we
don't have to feel what it is to be a
limited and a finite human, which is all sort of
(05:26):
uncomfortable to face the truth. What I want to argue
is that it is uncomfortable to face the truth, But
on the other side of that discomfort is something much
more freeing and energizing and exciting than, you know, continuing
to do this sort of futile search for the perfect
system or the perfect way of life.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The other thing is none of us actually know what
we're doing, do we. I mean, it might look like
some people do, but we don't. I mean, I've spent
my life winging it, and I've always been slightly ashamed
of that, and now I'm holding onto that and good
on me.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. I think imposter
syndrome is a great way in which we to sort
of dramatize the way that we are limited because people
think that they don't know what they're doing in their
job or as a parent or a relationship. But they
also think that other people do know what they're doing,
and perhaps if they themselves put enough time and effort
and study and discipline into it, they too could get
(06:26):
to the state of competence and knowing what they're doing.
But yes, what you learn as you get a bit
older is that everyone's winging it all the time. The
differences that some people are more comfortable with that fact
because they've sort of accepted that that's how it is.
So this is another example of how actually there's a
lot of liberation in seeing that our troubles are worse
(06:46):
than we thought they were. You might think that your
imposter syndrome is going to be you know that your
lack of experience is something that needs to be fixed.
But when you realize in the end that like everyone
feels that way all the time. It's actually worse than that,
it's not fixable. That's kind of wonderful because then you
might as well just roll up your sleeves and get
stuck into doing something instead of waiting for this time
(07:07):
when you feel ready.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So taught me through this approach a little bit more.
How can we realize? How can we realize that we
aren't going to sort our lives out?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I mean, I think it comes from ultimately from kind
of a certain kind of perspective shift that really has
to be constantly reinforced. And part of what I'm up
to in this book is trying to structure it, you know,
four weeks consisting of seven short chapters for each day.
It's something that people might actually do in the midst
(07:39):
of their lives, right, so they might actually see how
these perspective shifts interact with the ordinary daily activities. Not
you have to go away on a retreat for three
months in the mountains and come back totally transformed, because
when does that ever happen? But just you know, something
that really gets into the texture of daily life. I
(08:00):
think beyond that, when it comes to sort of specific
things to do, people are very very hungry for advice,
like every morning, do these three things before seven o'clock
and you'll be fine. But I think that's the problem, right,
this idea that there exists some instruction manual that if
(08:20):
we just followed it then life would all go smoothly.
So when people ask me for sort of specific advice,
I'll almost always say, like, pick something that you know
your life should have more of, certain kind of work,
creative practice, a relationship you wish you were nurturing more,
a hobby, whatever, and just bring yourself to do ten
(08:41):
minutes of it today, however, imperfectly, however, you know, falteringly
and badly, but actually in reality, instead of launching into
these big schemes that we always love about how we're
going to become a very different kind of person, you know,
in a few months time or a few years time.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And that's the thing, isn't it. We pick something that
we want to change, we pick a bad habit we
want to improve, and then we spend all this time
planning how we're going to do it, when really what
you're saying, Oliver is just get up and do it right.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Right, and don't even think right, no, exactly, and don't
even think about. I mean, even the idea that there's
a problem you have to fix can be quite It
has a sort of secret payoff. You know, as long
as you're still trying to fix something in yourself, you
almost kind of don't have to show up quite so
fully for life now. So I think a great thought
experiment if say, procrastination is your problem, or you're a
(09:33):
catastrophist or something or whatever, it is a good thought
experiment like, well, what if I always am going to
be like this, Like what if I never am going
to completely get rid of my tendency towards procrastination or
being a catastrophizer. Oh well, maybe if I'm always going
to have that, I can just sort of leave that
aside and get on with some things instead of spend
my whole life trying to trying to fix it. I
(09:55):
think that's a really powerful framing.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
And that was one chapter that I really enjoyed, and
I think sort of stands out as being a sign
of the times. You can't care about everything, you know,
and you also talk just sort of about trying to
stay sane when the world is a mess. You've just
kind of got to let the future be the future,
don't you.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, I think that a lot of people, you know,
anyone who sort of cares about being a good citizen,
anyone who thinks that anything happening outside their four walls
of their own house is concern to them, which is,
you know, a lot of us is terribly liable to
then think You've got to somehow make a difference to
sort of everything you see happening. And unless you're really
really helping the world, you're a bad person. And I
(10:36):
kind of make the case in that chapter that you know, again,
because we live in this attention economy where everything is
brought to us constantly, and you hear about so much
awful stuff, all the crises unfolding around the world, you actually,
in order to make a difference to any of them,
you actually have to be willing to withdraw your attention
from others of them. You have to be willing to
(10:57):
pick your battles and say, I'm just not going to
be able to care about all the things. And as
a result, I can focus my volunteering time, or my
charter donations or whatever it might be at a level
that is actually at the scale that a human can
can do. Something.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I love the done list versus the to do list.
Talk us through this.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Well, this is just the very simple idea of keeping
a list of things that you have accomplished through the day.
You know, a list that gets longer during the day.
I mean, to do lists tend to get longer during
the day as well, but they're not meant to that's
a problem. So the idea of a done list is
just that it will shift your focus a little bit
(11:41):
away from comparing what you've done to all the things
you could, in theory do, which is an infinite list,
and therefore you'll always feel bad when you make that comparison,
and shifts your attention back to the comparison between what
you've actually done and what if you've done nothing today? Right,
And if you get through you know, if you do
(12:02):
sort of twenty useful things in a day, or even
five useful things day, compared to the infinite number that
you haven't done, that's nothing. But compared to doing nothing,
that's that's quite a lot. So I think it's a
helpful way to break this habit of always finding the
comparison that makes us feel the worst.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Oliver, talk to me about productivity. Are we approaching it?
All wrong.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I mean, productivity is such a strange I spend a
lot of time writing about now, a lot of time
thinking about it. But it's such a strange concept, really,
I mean, clearly on an individual personal level, there's no value.
There's no inherent value in just like doing a lot
of things. It depends what the things are, right, I mean,
there's plenty of things it would be good if people
(12:49):
in the world did less of. So I think that
what I'm trying to do, I suppose, is, is come
up with some sort of notion of meaningful productivity that
honors the fact that, yeah, a lot of us do
want to accomplish things. We don't just want to become
completely passive and drift through the world, you know, and
(13:09):
be at peace in that way. We actually want to
find our peace and our and our fulfillment in doing
a bunch of stuff, but not just doing things for
the sake of doing them, and not and certainly not
out of any notion that if we did enough of
them we might one day get to the end of
the list of things to do and finally be able
to rest.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So, Oliver, you've been doing this writing for a while. Now,
where are you it. Has it changed your life?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Oh, it totally has. I mean, you know, I'm definitely
a work in progress, and I often feel like questions
like are you a lot less anxious than you used
to be? Or something need to be directed to my
wife rather than me, right, And I'm not really the
right judge of my own of what I'm like to
live with, But I think I am a lot calmer
and a lot more able than I used to be
(13:57):
to choose a few things to focus on, and to
focus on them less tormented by all the other things
that I that I am could in principle be doing
with that time. And on a sort of meta level,
I guess I've also realized that, you know, the end
point of all this is not to become the perfect person,
even the perfect person that being imperfect. It's just it's
(14:20):
just a sort of open ended journey towards a sort
of greater and greater acceptance of the reality that we're
really in. And so I find that very empowering. But
I don't think it's all going to end with, you know,
me achieving the perfect level of attainment at it or
anything like that.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Oliver, Thank you so much for your time today. It's
been wonderful to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
That was author Oliver Berkman. The book is called Meditations
for Mortals. I don't recommunicate you. The great thing about
it has the book's been designed to read a chepter
a day. It's not like you need to sit down
and immerse yourself and for a long, per time chapter day,
which is quite manageable. I don't love the bit at
the indie where he talked about you know, there are
some people who are probably going to pick up this
book and go, Okay, now I'm going to be perfect
(15:06):
to being imperfect, which is just what we want, don't
We always want to nail things anyway. The book is
in stores now.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks. It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm reading this new book and the very first line
really stood out to me. It said, this is a
book about how the world opens up once you realize
you're never going to sort your life out. Interesting concept,
isn't it. The book is Meditations for Mortals, four weeks
to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts,
and its author as journalist and columnist Oliver Berkman. You
(00:35):
may have heard of his last book. It was called
It was a best sell it was called four Thousand Weeks.
Now Oliver is not your usual self self help guru,
but is here to give us all a bit of
a reality check on just how finite life is and
realistically how much we can get done, and whether we
even need to get any of it done at all.
Oliver Berkman joins me now from London. Good morning morning.
(00:59):
You wrote this book for yourself. Why was that?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Well? I think that's true of pretty much any book
that reports to offer advice or wisdom. You know, it's
really the author trying to work out what they think
and write the advice that they need to hear or
have benefited from very recently. Specifically, I think you know
that what I take to be the topic of this book,
(01:23):
which is how we actually get across that gap from
knowing how we want to show up for life to
actually doing it. That was something that was really sort
of has weighed on my mind for a very long time, right,
you know, having this really strong sense of the work
I want to be focusing on how I want to
be in my relationships, the activities I want to do
in my spare time. You can have some great ideas
(01:45):
about this and just always never quite get around to
actually doing it. So that was what I needed.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Olive always should be clear at the start of this
this isn't self help. In fact, you're a bit of
a skiptic of self help, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, I don't mind the label. I've sort of resigned
to it at this point. I'm not offended if it's
shelved in that section, just happy for it to be
shelved in a bookstore. But yeah, I mean, what I'm
trying to resist in this book, and in the structure
of this book too, if you want to talk about that,
is that risk that I think is so present where
(02:22):
people feel like, Okay, they've got a problem, relationship isn't
going well, or they procrastinate too much, or they're too
anxious about the news headlines, whatever it is. So they
then set out to kind of find some system for
fixing this and for making their lives totally different, and
they have all sorts of ambitions for how perfect this
(02:42):
is going to be, and then it just all goes wrong,
or they put it off for months and never get
around to it, or it never really happens. I wanted
to write a book that was very explicitly about doing
things just a little bit differently, but doing them right
now in reality, in this kind of limited, finite situation
that we find ourselves in as humans doing stuff differently,
(03:05):
right in the middle of the too many emails and
the terrifying news headlines and the imposter syndrome and your
problem with distraction and procrastination and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
You say that we've never lived in more anxious times.
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I mean, I think what lends a lot of the
anxiety to our situation now is just the level of connectivity, right,
the degree to which you can find out about things
that are happening right around the globe. You open up
a social media app, you're you're connected to more genuine
(03:43):
and appalling human suffering than the greatest saints in history
ever even learned about, because you know they lived before
this level of connectivity. I also think that you know,
in our lives, in our personal, our working lives, we're
sort of beset by all these kind of infinite inputs.
There's no limit to the amount of email you could receive,
(04:04):
the amount of family obligations you could see on the
amount of books you might feel you needed to read,
articles you know I needed to catch up on it.
It's just the list just goes on and on and on.
And I think all of that leads us to this
feeling of like, well, we've got to try to get
on top of everything. We've got to try to sort
our lives out, but it's harder than ever to do so.
(04:25):
And in that gap, there's a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Where do you think we're going wrong with the many
ways we're sort of approaching our lives. Why are we
so obsessed about perfecting them or finding the next thing
that's going to make us happy or you know, make
life look perfect.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I mean, I think, to get right down to the
sort of philosophical roots of it, we don't like being finite.
We don't like having limited time on the planet, limited
time in the day, limited control over how our lives unfold,
limited knowledge and understanding of what's going on, you know,
all the rest of it. And so we sort of
(05:04):
comfort ourselves by chain these fantasies of one day in
the future, finally being on top of things, finally knowing
what we're doing, finally being sorted out and organized, because
it sort of keeps alive that fantasy that maybe we
don't have to feel what it is to be a
limited and a finite human, which is all sort of
(05:26):
uncomfortable to face the truth. What I want to argue
is that it is uncomfortable to face the truth, But
on the other side of that discomfort is something much
more freeing and energizing and exciting than, you know, continuing
to do this sort of futile search for the perfect
system or the perfect way of life.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The other thing is none of us actually know what
we're doing, do we. I mean, it might look like
some people do, but we don't. I mean, I've spent
my life winging it, and I've always been slightly ashamed
of that, and now I'm holding onto that and good
on me.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. I think imposter
syndrome is a great way in which we to sort
of dramatize the way that we are limited because people
think that they don't know what they're doing in their
job or as a parent or a relationship. But they
also think that other people do know what they're doing,
and perhaps if they themselves put enough time and effort
and study and discipline into it, they too could get
(06:26):
to the state of competence and knowing what they're doing.
But yes, what you learn as you get a bit
older is that everyone's winging it all the time. The
differences that some people are more comfortable with that fact
because they've sort of accepted that that's how it is.
So this is another example of how actually there's a
lot of liberation in seeing that our troubles are worse
(06:46):
than we thought they were. You might think that your
imposter syndrome is going to be you know that your
lack of experience is something that needs to be fixed.
But when you realize in the end that like everyone
feels that way all the time. It's actually worse than that,
it's not fixable. That's kind of wonderful because then you
might as well just roll up your sleeves and get
stuck into doing something instead of waiting for this time
(07:07):
when you feel ready.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So taught me through this approach a little bit more.
How can we realize? How can we realize that we
aren't going to sort our lives out?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I mean, I think it comes from ultimately from kind
of a certain kind of perspective shift that really has
to be constantly reinforced. And part of what I'm up
to in this book is trying to structure it, you know,
four weeks consisting of seven short chapters for each day.
It's something that people might actually do in the midst
(07:39):
of their lives, right, so they might actually see how
these perspective shifts interact with the ordinary daily activities. Not
you have to go away on a retreat for three
months in the mountains and come back totally transformed, because
when does that ever happen? But just you know, something
that really gets into the texture of daily life. I
(08:00):
think beyond that, when it comes to sort of specific
things to do, people are very very hungry for advice,
like every morning, do these three things before seven o'clock
and you'll be fine. But I think that's the problem, right,
this idea that there exists some instruction manual that if
(08:20):
we just followed it then life would all go smoothly.
So when people ask me for sort of specific advice,
I'll almost always say, like, pick something that you know
your life should have more of, certain kind of work,
creative practice, a relationship you wish you were nurturing more,
a hobby, whatever, and just bring yourself to do ten
(08:41):
minutes of it today, however, imperfectly, however, you know, falteringly
and badly, but actually in reality, instead of launching into
these big schemes that we always love about how we're
going to become a very different kind of person, you know,
in a few months time or a few years time.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And that's the thing, isn't it. We pick something that
we want to change, we pick a bad habit we
want to improve, and then we spend all this time
planning how we're going to do it, when really what
you're saying, Oliver is just get up and do it right.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Right, and don't even think right, no, exactly, and don't
even think about. I mean, even the idea that there's
a problem you have to fix can be quite It
has a sort of secret payoff. You know, as long
as you're still trying to fix something in yourself, you
almost kind of don't have to show up quite so
fully for life now. So I think a great thought
experiment if say, procrastination is your problem, or you're a
(09:33):
catastrophist or something or whatever, it is a good thought
experiment like, well, what if I always am going to
be like this, Like what if I never am going
to completely get rid of my tendency towards procrastination or
being a catastrophizer. Oh well, maybe if I'm always going
to have that, I can just sort of leave that
aside and get on with some things instead of spend
my whole life trying to trying to fix it. I
(09:55):
think that's a really powerful framing.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
And that was one chapter that I really enjoyed, and
I think sort of stands out as being a sign
of the times. You can't care about everything, you know,
and you also talk just sort of about trying to
stay sane when the world is a mess. You've just
kind of got to let the future be the future,
don't you.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, I think that a lot of people, you know,
anyone who sort of cares about being a good citizen,
anyone who thinks that anything happening outside their four walls
of their own house is concern to them, which is,
you know, a lot of us is terribly liable to
then think You've got to somehow make a difference to
sort of everything you see happening. And unless you're really
really helping the world, you're a bad person. And I
(10:36):
kind of make the case in that chapter that you know, again,
because we live in this attention economy where everything is
brought to us constantly, and you hear about so much
awful stuff, all the crises unfolding around the world, you actually,
in order to make a difference to any of them,
you actually have to be willing to withdraw your attention
from others of them. You have to be willing to
(10:57):
pick your battles and say, I'm just not going to
be able to care about all the things. And as
a result, I can focus my volunteering time, or my
charter donations or whatever it might be at a level
that is actually at the scale that a human can
can do. Something.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I love the done list versus the to do list.
Talk us through this.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Well, this is just the very simple idea of keeping
a list of things that you have accomplished through the day.
You know, a list that gets longer during the day.
I mean, to do lists tend to get longer during
the day as well, but they're not meant to that's
a problem. So the idea of a done list is
just that it will shift your focus a little bit
(11:41):
away from comparing what you've done to all the things
you could, in theory do, which is an infinite list,
and therefore you'll always feel bad when you make that comparison,
and shifts your attention back to the comparison between what
you've actually done and what if you've done nothing today? Right,
And if you get through you know, if you do
(12:02):
sort of twenty useful things in a day, or even
five useful things day, compared to the infinite number that
you haven't done, that's nothing. But compared to doing nothing,
that's that's quite a lot. So I think it's a
helpful way to break this habit of always finding the
comparison that makes us feel the worst.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Oliver, talk to me about productivity. Are we approaching it?
All wrong.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I mean, productivity is such a strange I spend a
lot of time writing about now, a lot of time
thinking about it. But it's such a strange concept, really,
I mean, clearly on an individual personal level, there's no value.
There's no inherent value in just like doing a lot
of things. It depends what the things are, right, I mean,
there's plenty of things it would be good if people
(12:49):
in the world did less of. So I think that
what I'm trying to do, I suppose, is, is come
up with some sort of notion of meaningful productivity that
honors the fact that, yeah, a lot of us do
want to accomplish things. We don't just want to become
completely passive and drift through the world, you know, and
(13:09):
be at peace in that way. We actually want to
find our peace and our and our fulfillment in doing
a bunch of stuff, but not just doing things for
the sake of doing them, and not and certainly not
out of any notion that if we did enough of
them we might one day get to the end of
the list of things to do and finally be able
to rest.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So, Oliver, you've been doing this writing for a while. Now,
where are you it. Has it changed your life?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Oh, it totally has. I mean, you know, I'm definitely
a work in progress, and I often feel like questions
like are you a lot less anxious than you used
to be? Or something need to be directed to my
wife rather than me, right, And I'm not really the
right judge of my own of what I'm like to
live with, But I think I am a lot calmer
and a lot more able than I used to be
(13:57):
to choose a few things to focus on, and to
focus on them less tormented by all the other things
that I that I am could in principle be doing
with that time. And on a sort of meta level,
I guess I've also realized that, you know, the end
point of all this is not to become the perfect person,
even the perfect person that being imperfect. It's just it's
(14:20):
just a sort of open ended journey towards a sort
of greater and greater acceptance of the reality that we're
really in. And so I find that very empowering. But
I don't think it's all going to end with, you know,
me achieving the perfect level of attainment at it or
anything like that.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Oliver, Thank you so much for your time today. It's
been wonderful to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
That was author Oliver Berkman. The book is called Meditations
for Mortals. I don't recommunicate you. The great thing about
it has the book's been designed to read a chepter
a day. It's not like you need to sit down
and immerse yourself and for a long, per time chapter day,
which is quite manageable. I don't love the bit at
the indie where he talked about you know, there are
some people who are probably going to pick up this
book and go, Okay, now I'm going to be perfect
(15:06):
to being imperfect, which is just what we want, don't
We always want to nail things anyway. The book is
in stores now.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks. It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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