Week 24, 2024
Week 24 of 2024 has arrived. I am one week closer to not being able to do something that I love. I don't know what it is... and I likely won't notice the moment until it is gone. Aging seems to be the gradual stripping away of abilities along with the gaining of wisdom to help you tolerate it.
Time to walk over to your 4K Weeks poster and fill in another square. Done?
Would you like to join the 4K Weeks Skool group? I am aiming for a late July launch...If you are interested in being on the waitlist, send an email to Eli: info@4kweeks.com
The email this week has a vibe of hard things that just need to be endured. I am turning 47 this week, and I love my life. I wouldn't change a thing... seriously. But that doesn't mean that there aren't parts of it that are hard. I love basketball, it makes my knees hurt, it didn't use to. I love watching my kids grow up, but I miss them as babies. I know I am mortal, but I love living, and if I live to be as old as my dad was when he died, I have 41 years left . . .that doesn't seem like much. And hopefully, for her sake, my wife will have to be lonely without me for a while.
It's special because it's finite and unknown, and that's always hard to remember when the universe takes back something that it let you borrow. Ben Kweller.
Some things are just to be endured. There is a melancholy to being human, and it's ok to just sit with it sometimes. It's still the best thing going, and I mean that with every cell that I have...
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Remarkable Weeks
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Week 24 of 1942, Anne Frank receives a diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam. She was 678.29 weeks old (13.01 yrs).
- Week 24 of 1963, Thích Quảng Đức protested against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government through self-immolation. He passed away silently, and a photograph of his act evoked worldwide reactions. I saw this photo in a book when I was in 6th grade. I still don't understand it. He was about 3,470 weeks old (66 yrs).
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Week 24 of 2000, Samuel L. Jackson was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was 2,686.00 weeks old (51.51 yrs).
This Week's Quote
Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing. -Tony Blaire
This is hard. One of the reasons that it is hard is because, likely, no one will make a movie of you taking a stand and losing everything. Countless heroes have been ground down to a grease spot by countless empires with not a single afterthought, let alone the glorious vindication that we watch in movies. And even in Braveheart, the story of William Wallace, in order to actually "win" Wallace had to lose everything, get tortured and finally murdered.
I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem very fair.
And yet... it matters.
How we act is one of the only things we have control over. Doing the "right" thing is a choice that can't be taken from you. You have to give someone that power over you.
It is uncomfortable, and luckily 99.9% of us will never have to make this choice, but the lesson here is that the only thing more important than your life... is how you lived it.
What I am Consuming This Week
This American Life, "#832 That Other Guy" The Chipotle story is wild.
The Ezra Klein Show, "Your Mind is Being Fracked". A very interesting conversation about attention.
Loving What Is, Byron Katie. I don't know how to feel about it...but it is remarkable. It is a framework for working through issues. Very interesting.
"Ships in the Harbor", Tommy Prine. I didn't realize this when I first listened to this song, but Tommy Prine is the son of John Prine. John Prine's sudden death, from Covid, early in the Coronavirus pandemic (after twice surviving cancer), was the first time I really felt the tragedy of the pandemic. My dad's death was the last.
Instagram Nuggets:
- Which voice wins today?
- There is nothing you can't do.
- Practice like you play.
- It gets hot in that kitchen...nobody cooks for you.
What I am Thinking About This Week
"Should"
This is a discussion my wife an I have been having this week. It started with me mentioning Byron Katie's book Loving What Is to her. Specifically there was this passage that jumped out to me...
"People often ask me if I had a religion before 1986, and I say "Yes, it was: My Children Should Pick Up Their Socks." This was my religion, then one day I realized that it simply wasn't true. The reality was that day after day, they left their socks on the floor, after all my years of preaching and nagging and punishing them. I saw that I was the one who should pick up the socks if I wanted them picked up. My children were perfectly happy with their socks on the floor. Who had the problem? It was me. It was my thoughts about the socks on the floor that had made my life difficult, not the socks themselves. And who had the solution? Again, me. I realized that I could be right, or I could be free."
This is so Stoic. But also, it is a bit of horse crap. I have long since been disabused of the notion that I can teach my children anything they aren't interested in learning with my words, but I still try every day! (Actions are a different story, but that's a long play.)
But why the hell should I have to pick up the socks?!
It is a small thing to think about picking up after your kids if they don't want to. We can all make that shift without too much trouble and probably be more peaceful because of it. It's when we take this idea out of our safe and mostly harmonious home that it starts to be hard.
"People shouldn't vote for this guy or that guy."
"People shouldn't throw trash out of their car window."
"People should love their neighbor as they love their self."
"People should be more willing to share their plentiful abundance"
"People shouldn't accept the killing of children as an uncomfortable side effect of their goals."
There are various stories of philosophers in ancient times being sentenced to death... often a deep, questioning wisdom and tyrants don't mix well.
It seems noble to accept your fate and not become a sniveling, whining, begging, wimp when the end is nigh. But...at the same time, I am a fighter... and I can't help but wonder how it serves justice to calmly commit suicide when the tyrant Emperor Nero tells you to.
Picking up your socks I can do... I am even at the point where most of the time, if you cut me off in traffic, I can say out loud... "Maybe she is racing to her dying father's bedside."
I know that I don't know what any of you have gone through just to get here.
But I am having trouble with laying down and dying just because someone thinks the world should be this way and is willing to kill me over it.
Do you have any thoughts on this? Digging in to the deep questions on how to properly live these 4000 weeks is what I am hoping to do in the 4000 Weeks Skool group. I think it is really important to regularly sharpen our minds on this type of thinking.
Until Later,
Spencer, Owner of 4KWeeks.com
Dad Joke O' The Week
Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom?
The P is silent!
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