Edition #53: The Final Time Meditation

Plus, will Down syndrome become extinct, permission to take a break, and a year in cartoons.

Dec 17, 2020

A Note From the Editor

There is a small, illogical part of me that will do anything for free food, so when I got an email a month or so ago asking whether I might be interested in participating in a 30-minute interview about happiness in exchange for a Seamless gift card, I agreed. When the day came, the interviewer wasted no time jumping right in, asking, “What is happiness to you?” My response was reflexive, springing into my mind without scrutiny. “Lightness. The absence of mental weight. Like when you can just be.” The interviewer didn’t hide the fact that he was perplexed by my answer, saying that I was his final interview for the project and he hadn’t heard a response like mine before. Curious, I inquired about how other participants answered. “Security, time with loved ones, success, stuff like that,” he said.

I began to pose the question to others, as I was curious to know whether my answer was an outlier. I posed the question to a few of my family members the night before Thanksgiving, and my youngest brother was the first to respond. Reflexively, the same way I did during the interview. “It’s the good old days, you know? We’re happiest during moments when we might not even realize it. And when we think about those moments down the line, we see that they were the good old days. Like right now. This might be the good old days, but we don’t know it yet.”

His answer has been ringing in my ears for the past few weeks, since the time I’ve been back in Florida. I decided to come down for the holidays with the justification that I hadn’t seen my family in over a year and that in spending a full month here I could quarantine for two weeks and make my trip as safe as possible. What I didn’t anticipate was the difficulty I would find in being present in the moment, or what the weight of the pressure to be fully present would feel like on my chest. I wanted, and needed, this time to be everything at once: fun and fulfilling, a soothing balm on the burn of a painful year and a difficult breakup. Instead, I’ve found myself trapped in the confines of my mind, worrying that I might not be enjoying my time here enough, that my mental predisposition is preventing me from being present with my family, who I rarely get to spend this much time with. The words of my younger brother echo in my mind, “These might be the good old days,” and a voice in my head replies, “Then why are you making them so impossible to enjoy?” All of this comes at that crucial end of year time, a period when I would normally be reflecting, goal setting, and figuring out a plan of action for the coming 365 days. My old methods of approaching a new year no longer feel relevant as I’ve recognized the illusion of control is merely that, but not planning for the year also doesn’t feel like a viable option for my personality type.

All that’s to say, it felt a bit divine when I learned about the Final Time Meditation at the start of this week, a concept rooted in stoicism that feels like an answer to both questions (how to be more present right now and how to approach planning for next year after the one we’ve just lived through). The premise is simple: everything you do, imagine you might be doing it for the final time. You aren’t supposed to marinate on the thought too deeply because doing so would likely bring you down, you should simply let it flash in your mind, considering what it might feel like if you knew it were the last time you would be performing a task. Whether we realize it or not, there will be a final time for everything we do, even mundane chores like taking out the trash. One day, when our bodies aren’t capable of performing such housework, we will marvel at our former strength, thanking out old bodies for what the tasks they were able to perform so seamlessly back then. I’ve spent some time reflecting on the final times I’ve experienced in my life to this point — the final time dancing on a stage for a cheering crowd, the final time cuddled on the couch with a former partner, the final time picking out the perfect outfit for the first day of school — and recognized that in every case, I did not realize I was experiencing such events for the last time. Had I known, what might I have done differently? What might I have seen and smelled and noticed, what might I have said?

I’m taking this simple approach for 2021, both in terms of planning and living: if it were my final year on Earth, how might I spend it? I certainly wouldn’t waste it by agonizing over whether I was being present enough, or whether I had progressed far enough in my career relative to those around me. Instead, I would want to leave something of a legacy. I’d want to create more art, to make my loved ones unequivocally aware of how special they are to me. To directly impact the lives of others in the most positive, lasting way I was able. I would want to live less in my head and more in my body, to relish equally in the mundane and the unusual. To talk to strangers more, to dance more, to read more. To lay in the grass and look up at the sky, my feet bare.

Cheers, my dears, and might I ask: if 2021 was your final period of time on Earth, how would you spend it? What principles would guide your life, and what legacy would you want to leave behind? I’m looking forward to replacing my old, somewhat heartless methods of year-end goal setting with this truer, more substantive approach. I’d love to hear how you plan to approach goal-setting for the coming year, or about a memory of a Final Time you’ve experienced in your life (and whether you were aware of its finality).

Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming

Will Down Syndrome Eventually Become Extinct? Anyone who knows me personally might assume this would be a piece I would care about, given that my younger sister has Down syndrome. Whether you personally know someone with Downs or not, this piece of stellar reporting is worth a read in its entirety. It explores the implication of the universal prenatal Downs screening offered by the Danish government — which led to roughly 95 percent of expecting mothers carrying fetuses with Downs choosing to abort — but it goes a step further, asking the reader to consider a handful of difficult questions. Who should get to decide what medical conditions constitute an “unliveable” life? What might we lose as the special needs population dwindles? And what happens when this type of genetic testing begins to teeter on the brink of selective eugenics?
“Suddenly, a new power was thrust into the hands of ordinary people—the power to decide what kind of life is worth bringing into the world.”
A Poignant Photo Series Starring Laura Dern, Depressed Housewife. There are two things I loved about this hybrid article/photo essay. First and foremost, the photos — an ode to the photographer, Jona Frank’s, mother — and how they perfectly, artistically depict a depressed suburban housewife in the 1960s. It’s all too easy to forget how stifling life must have felt back then when societal expectations weren’t framed as optional for most women, and these photos were a reminder of that. And secondly, reading about Laura Dern and Jona Frank in such an ordinary way. Just two moms going to Whole Foods, baking cookies, and also being Hollywood’s elite.
Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting. Maybe you’ve read this one before, either when I shared it in a previous edition earlier this year or on your own, but either way it’s worth a revisit. The essay went viral way back in April when we still thought the pandemic could maybe we over by summer (ha!). Now that the vaccine is out and we are closer to the end than we’ve ever been (even if it is still a year away), we need to start consciously thinking about how we plan to return to the “normal” world. And as this essay warms, brands will be there to distract you, to get you to spend money to feel better, and you might be urged to forget what you saw and continue living your life. But if we take that approach, if nothing changes, then all of this pain and suffering will have been in vain.
“And what a perfect time for Best Buy and H&M and Wal-Mart to help me feel normal again. If I could just have the new iPhone in my hand, if I could rest my feet on a pillow of new Nikes, if I could drink a venti blonde vanilla latte or sip a Diet Coke, then this very dark feeling would go away.”

Perhaps You Should…
Take a Break, Baby

Limited Edition Print (250) - Sex and Takeout - Lazy Sunday – Sarah Bahbah

Disclaimer: I am saying nothing revolutionary here, but might I suggest you spend the last two weeks of the month taking a mental break, if you are able? The definition of the word break (verb) is: interrupt (a sequence, course, or continuous state). 2020 has been a continuous state of intense emotion, and if you’re anything like me, your brain has likely been working overtime to regulate itself during all the last ten months. So for the final two weeks of this year, I am taking a break — from this newsletter, from obsessively checking my emails, from spending 8 hours a day hunched in front of my laptop, from mentally pressuring myself to “do more”, from making lists. Your break might include taking a stab at a few new baking projects, finally watching Hamilton, sleeping in as late as you feel like. Or, maybe your break will include nothing but living each day as you so please, and that works, too. Either way, may the remainder of this year bring the rest and recharge we all so desperately need.

Bonus Content (A Year in New Yorker Cartoons)

newyorkercartoons

A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons)

The daily humor email from The New Yorker is often the highlight of my afternoon, so it should come as no surprise that I loved this roundup of Instagram’s favorite New Yorker cartoons from 2020. I can never get over the cleverness of these captions, and if you haven’t already, you can take a stab at the creative genius by participating in the ongoing cartoon caption contest.

A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

“And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero.”

-The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.

that's so interesting

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