As followers of my posts will know, I am a big fan of the writing of Oliver Burkeman and a subscriber to his twice-monthly email, The Imperfectionist, which I heartily recommend subscribing to as well! His new book, Four Thousand Weeks, is due out next month which he describes as being about “making the most of our radically finite lives in a world of impossible demands, relentless distraction and political insanity (and ‘productivity techniques’ that mainly just make everyone feel busier).” As per my post last week on summer reading, this is definitely on my list!
It is a common refrain that many of us are likely to hear from our kids from the back of the car as we head for your staycation, are we there yet? It is a question that Burkeman tackles in this edition of The Imperfectionist, which resonates for our own journeys too…
“I think virtually everyone, except perhaps the very Zen or very old, goes through life haunted to some degree by the feeling that this isn’t quite the real thing, not just yet – that soon enough, we’ll get everything in working order, get organised, get our personal issues resolved, but that till then we’re living what the great Swiss psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz called the “provisional life.” … This error of thought might be fine if it didn’t detract from the quality of the life you’re experiencing right now. But it does.”
The Social Enterprise 