Jaron Lowenstein

Great essay from Sam Harris on the “last time” for everything (from Waking Up App) — transcribed by @bot Many here might not think highly of him any more, but he’s a clear thinker on many subjects — even if you don’t agree on politics. **Transcript — The Last Time (Sam Harris)** [0:00] I'd like you to take a moment to think about all the things in this life that you will experience for the last time. Of course, there will come a day when you will die and then everything will have been done for the last time. [0:15] But long before you die, you will cease to have certain experiences, experiences that you surely take for granted now. If you're a parent, when is the last time you will pick up your child, or tuck her into bed, or read her a story? [0:36] Our youngest daughter still says, aminals instead of animals. And though I'm a stickler for words, I am not correcting her. Each one of those is priceless. Now thinking in this way lends a poignancy to everything, even to things that you don't like. Again, let's say you're a new parent and you're getting woken up several times a night by your baby. That's brutal, but there will be a last time. And knowing that can change your experience in the moment. There's something sweet even about this experience. It's possible that you will miss this. We do everything a finite number of times, and yet we tend to take even beautiful moments for granted. And the rest of the time we're just trying to get through stuff. You're just trying to get to the end of whatever experience you're having. tim urban, who writes this wonderful blog titled @WaitButWhy, often touches this topic. He actually publishes a poster which represents 90 years of life in weeks. Each line has 52 squares, and there are 90 lines on a single page. And the scale is frankly a little alarming to contemplate. Each week is a significant piece of 90 years, and you can put your finger on the current week in your life. You can see where you are, and then of course you realize you have no assurance of how many weeks you have left. Assuming that you have 90 years, certainly 90 good years, is generally not a safe assumption. What you can know, however, is that each time you do something, pleasant or unpleasant, that is one last time you will do it. And there will come a time when you will have done something the final time. And you will rarely know when that is. For instance, I used to love to ski, and I now haven't skied in well over a decade. Will I ever ski again? I have no idea. But I can assure you that the last time I took off my skis, I was not even dimly aware of the possibility that it might be the last time, right? That I might live for many, many more years, and yet this stood a good chance of being the last time I would ever ski. When is the last time you swam in the ocean or went camping? When is the last time you took a walk just to take a walk? As you go about your day today, consider, everything you're doing is like this. Everything represents a finite opportunity to savor your life. On some level, everything is precious, and if it doesn't seem that way, I think you'll find that paying more attention can make it seem that way. Attention really is your true source of wealth, even more than time, right? Because you can waste time being distracted. So this is just to urge you to take a little more care. When you meet someone for the first time and you shake their hand, pay a little more attention. When you thank somebody for something, mean it a little more. Connect with your life. And mindfulness is the tool that allows you to do that, because the only alternative is to be lost in thought And every time you notice that you're lost, that you're distracted by a thought about the past or the future, and you come back, you are training your mind. And it may feel like an effort at first, but eventually it's like continually waking up from a dream. And ask yourself, how much effort does that take?