Transcript

#555: The Liberation of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy — Oliver Burkeman

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Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. This special and very short episode requires just a little bit of backstory. Cal Newport, best selling author of Deep Work, was the first of several people to recommend a book to me called Four Thousand. Weeks. The subtitle is Time Management for Mortals, but that doesn't quite capture The core of this book. It's an unusual book. The author is Oliver Berkman, that's B U R K E M A N. I recently read it. Devoured the whole thing over a few days and captured hundreds of Kindle highlights in the process. It's quite unlike anything I've ever read.

And it's Perhaps a philosophical operating system of sorts. And one of my favorite chapters was Cosmic Insignificance Therapy. Even by itself, this chapter left me with a profound sense of calm. That lasted several days. It seems to stick for some reason. So, in short, I love the book.

My team reached out to Oliver to see if we could publish this chapter. Cosmic insignificance therapy on the podcast and blog. And here we are. You can find a link to the book. in the description of this episode, and you can also find the full text of the chapter over at Tim.blog. Slash cosmic.

That's T I M dot B L O G slash C O S M I C. And once again, the book is four thousand weeks. Don't miss it. I highly, highly recommend. The author, Oliver Berkman, can be found at oliverberkman.com. Again, that's Oliver B-U-R-K-E-M A N dot com. And you can follow him on Twitter at Oliver Berkman. And last but not least, huge thanks to McMillan Audio for providing The audio for this. This episode clocks in at around twenty minutes, so my hope is that you'll revisit it often when you need a moment of zen. It's excellent. I at least found it caught me at the right time. and really, really struck a chord. So with that

Please enjoy. Chapter 13 Cosmic insignificance therapy The Jungian psychotherapist James Hollis recalls the experience of one of his patients.

A successful vice president of a medical instruments company. Who was flying over the American Midwest on a business trip. Reading a book. When she was accosted by a thought. I hate my life.

A malaise that had been growing in her for years had crystallised in the understanding that she was spending her days in a way that no longer felt as if it had any meaning. The relish she'd had for her work had drained away. The rewards she'd been pursuing seemed worthless. And now life was a matter of going through the motions in the fading hope that it somehow all might yet pay off in future happiness. Perhaps you know how she felt.

Not everyone has this kind of sudden epiphany. But many of us know what it is to suspect that there might be richer, fuller, juicier things we could be doing with our four thousand weeks. Even when what we're currently doing with them looks from the outside like the definition of success. Or maybe you're familiar with the experience of returning to your daily routines, following an unusually satisfying weekend in nature or with old friends. And being struck by the thought that more of life should feel that way.

But it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the deeply engrossing parts to be more than rare exceptions. The modern world is especially lacking in good responses to such feelings. Religion no longer provides the universal ready made sense of purpose it once did. While consumerism misleads us into seeking meaning where it can't be found. But the sentiment itself is an ancient one.

The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes. among many others, would instantly have recognised the suffering of Hollis's patient. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it. And behold. All was vanity and a striving after wind.

And there was nothing to be gained under the sun. It's deeply unsettling to find yourself doubting the point of what you're doing with your life. But it isn't actually a bad thing. Because it demonstrates that an inner shift has already occurred. You couldn't entertain such doubts in the first place if you weren't already occupying a new vantage point on your life.

One from which you'd already begun to face the reality that you can't depend on fulfillment arriving at some distant point in the future. Once you've gotten your life in order or met the world's criteria for success. And that instead of the same. The matter needs addressing now. To realise midway through a business trip that you hate your life

is all ready to have taken the first step into one you don't hate. Because it means you've grasped the fact that these are the weeks that are going to have to be spent doing something worthwhile. If your finite life is to mean anything at all. This is a perspective from which you can finally ask the most fundamental question of time management. What would it mean to spend the only time you ever get?

In a way that truly feels as though you're making it count. The Great Pause. Sometimes this perceptual jolt affects a whole society at once. I wrote the first draft of this chapter under lockdown in New York City, during the coronavirus pandemic. When amid the grief and anxiety

It became normal to hear people express a sort of bittersweet gratitude for what they were experiencing. That even though they were furloughed and losing sleep about the rent, It was a genuine joy to see more of their children, or to rediscover the pleasures of planting flowers or baking bread. The enforced pause in work. School and socialising put on hold numerous assumptions about how we had to spend our time.

It turned out, for example. That many people could perform their jobs adequately without an hour long commute to a dreary office, or remaining at a desk until six thirty PM solely in order to appear hard working. It also turned out that most of the restaurant meals and takeout coffees I'd grown accustomed to consuming Presumably on the grounds that they enhanced my life. could be forsworn with no feeling of loss.

A double edged revelation. Given how many jobs depended on providing them. And it became clear. From the ritual applauding of emergency workers. Grocery runs undertaken for housebours, and many other acts of generosity.

But people cared about one another far more than we'd assumed. It was just that before the virus, apparently. We hadn't had the time to show it. Things hadn't changed for the better, obviously. But alongside the devastation that it wrought

The virus changed us for the better, at least temporarily, and at least in certain respects. It helped us perceive more clearly what our pre lockdown days had been lacking and the trade offs we'd been making, willingly or otherwise. For example by pursuing work lives that left no time for neighbourliness. A New York writer and director named Julio Vincent Gambuto Captured this sense of what I found myself starting to think of as possibility shock.

The startling understanding that things could be different on a grand scale. If only we collectively wanted that enough. What the trauma has shown us Gambuto wrote.

A carless Los Angeles has clear blue skies as pollution has simply stopped. In a quiet New York, you can hear the birds chirp in the middle of Madison Avenue. Coyotes have been spotted on the Golden Gate Bridge. These are the postcard images of what the world might be like, if we could find a way to have a less deadly effect on the planet. Of course, the crisis also revealed underfunded healthcare systems, venal politicians, deep racial inequities and chronic economic insecurity.

But these too contributed to the feeling that But now we were seeing what actually mattered. What demanded our attention. And that on some level we'd known it all along. When lockdown ended, Gambuto warned.

Corporations and governments would conspire to make us forget the possibilities we'd glimpsed, by means of shiny new products and services and distracting culture wars. And we'd be so desperate to return to normality. that we'd be tempted to comply. Instead, though, We could hold on to the sense of strangeness.

and make new choices about how we used the hours of our lives. What happened is inexplicably incredible. It's the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus. But the great pause. Please don't recoil from the bright light beaming through the window.

I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open. The great American return to normal is coming. But I beg of you.

Take a deep breath. Ignore the deafening noise and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal. A rare and truly sacred yes, sacred opportunity to get rid of the bullshit. And to only bring back what works for us.

What makes our lives richer. What makes our kids happier? What makes us truly proud? The hazard in any such discussion of what matters most in life, though. is that it tends to give rise to a kind of paralyzing grandiosity.

It starts to feel as though it's your duty to find something truly consequential to do with your time. to quit your office job to become an aid worker or start a space flight company. Or else, if you're in no position to make such a grand gesture, To conclude that a deeply meaningful life isn't an option for you. On the level of politics and social change, it becomes tempting to conclude that only the most revolutionary, world-transforming causes are worth fighting for. But it would be meaningless to spend your time, say

Caring for an elderly relative with dementia or volunteering at the local community garden. While the problems of global warming and income inequality remain unsolved. Among new age types. This same grandiosity takes the form of the belief that each of us has some cosmically significant life purpose. Which the universe is longing for us to uncover.

and then to fulfill. Which is why it's useful to begin this last stage of our journey with a blunt but unexpectedly liberating truth. But what you do with your life. Doesn't matter all that much. And when it comes to how you're using your finite time.

The universe absolutely could not care less. A modestly meaningful life The late British philosopher Brian McGee liked to make the following arresting point. Human civilization is about six thousand years old, but And we're in the habit of thinking of this as a staggeringly long time.

A vast duration across which empires rose and fell. And historical periods to which we give labels such as classical antiquity or the Middle Ages succeeded each other in only just moving time. Time moving in the sort of way a glacier moves. But now consider the matter a different way. In every generation

Even back when life expectancy was much shorter than it is today, There were always at least a few people who lived to the age of 100, or 5,200 weeks. And when each of those people was born There must have been a few other people alive at the time who'd already reached the age of one hundred themselves. So it's possible to visualize a chain of centenarian lifespans stretching all the way back through history with no spaces in between them.

Specific people. Who really lived. And each of whom we could name if only the historical record were good enough. Now for the arresting part. By this measure.

The golden age of the Egyptian pharaohs An era that strikes most of us as impossibly remote from our own. took place a scant thirty five lifetimes ago. Jesus was born about twenty lifetimes ago, but And the Renaissance happened seven lifetimes back.

A poultry five centenarian lifetimes ago was Henry VIII sat on the English throne. Five The number of lives you'd need in order to span the whole of civilization, 60.

Was The number of friends I squeeze into my living room when I have a drinks party. From this perspective Human history hasn't unfolded glacially. But in the blink of an eye.

Will have been a minuscule little flicker of near nothingness in the scheme of things. The merest pinpoint. With two incomprehensibly vast tracts of time. The past and future of the cosmos as a whole.

Stretching off into the distance on either side. It's natural to find such thoughts terrifying. To contemplate The massive indifference of the universe, writes Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh. Can feel like that.

As disorienting as being lost in a dense wood. Or as frightening as falling overboard into the sea with no one to know we have gone. But there's another angle from which it's oddly consoling. You might think of it as Cosmic insignificance therapy.

When things all seem too much, What better solace than a reminder that they are, provided you're willing to zoom out a bit. indistinguishable from nothing at all. The anxieties that clutter the average life. Relationship troubles, status rivalries, money worries shrink instantly down to irrelevance.

So do pandemics and presidencies for that matter. The cosmos carries on regardless. Calm and imperturbable. Or to quote the title of a book I once reviewed. The universe doesn't give a flying fuck about you.

To remember how little you matter on a cosmic time scale, can feel like putting down a heavy burden that most of us didn't realize we were carrying in the first place. This sense of relief is worth examining a little more closely, though. Because it draws attention to the fact that the rest of the time Most of us do go around thinking of ourselves as fairly central to the unfolding of the universe.

If we didn't. It wouldn't be any relief to be reminded that in reality this isn't the case. Nor is this a phenomenon confined to megalomaniacs or pathological narcissists. But something much more fundamental to being human. It's the understandable tendency.

To judge everything from the perspective you occupy. So that the few thousand weeks for which you happen to be around. Inevitably come to feel like the linchpin of history. to which all prior time was always leading up. These self-centered judgments are part of what psychologists call

The egocentricity bias. And they make good sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If you had a more realistic sense of your own sheer irrelevance, considered on the time scale of the universe. You'd probably be less motivated to struggle to survive. and thereby to propagate your genes.

You might imagine, moreover, But living with such an unrealistic sense of your own historical importance would make life feel more meaningful by investing your every action with a feeling of cosmic significance, however unwarranted. But what actually happens.

gives rise to an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar. Much too high. It suggests that in order to count as having been well spent, Your life needs to involve.

Deeply impressive accomplishments. Or that it should have a lasting impact on future generations. Or at the very least that it must. In the words of the philosopher Ido Landau Transcend the common and the mundane.

Clearly. It can't just be ordinary. After all, if your life is as significant in the scheme of things as you tend to believe How could you not feel obliged to do something truly remarkable with it? This is the mindset of the Silicon Valley tycoon determined to

Put a dent in the universe. Or the politiciated on leaving a legacy. Or the novelist who secretly thinks her work will count for nothing unless it reaches the heights and the public acclaimed. Of Leo Tolstoy's. Less obviously though.

It's also the implicit outlook of those who glumly conclude that their life is ultimately meaningless. And that they'd better stop expecting it to feel otherwise. What they really mean. is that they've adopted a standard of meaningfulness. to which virtually nobody could ever measure up.

We do not disapprove of a chair because it cannot be used to boil water for a nice cup of tea. Landau points out. A chair just Isn't the kind of thing that ought to have the capacity to boil water. So it isn't a problem, but it doesn't.

And it is likewise implausible. For almost all people. to demand of themselves that they be a Michelangelo, a Mozart, or an Einstein. There have only been a few dozen such people in the entire history of humanity. In other words,

You almost certainly won't put a dent in the universe. Indeed, Depending on the stringency of your criteria, even Steve Jobs, who coined that phrase, failed to leave such a dent. Perhaps the iPhone will be remembered for more generations than anything you or I will ever accomplish. But from a truly cosmic view.

It will soon be forgotten, like everything else. No wonder it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance. It's the feeling of realizing that you'd been holding yourself all this time. to standards you couldn't reasonably be expected to meet. And this realization isn't merely calming.

But liberating. Because once you're no longer burdened by such an unrealistic definition of a life well spent, You're free to consider the possibility. that a far wider variety of things might qualifyful ways to use your finite time. You're freed to

to consider the possibility that many of the things you're already doing with it are more meaningful than you'd supposed. And that until now. You'd subconsciously been devaluing them. On the grounds that they weren't significant enough. From this new perspective

It becomes possible to see that preparing nutritious meals for your children might matter as much as anything could ever matter. Even if you won't be winning any cooking awards. Or that your novel's worth writing if it moves or entertains a handful of your contemporaries. Even though you know you're no Tolstoy. Or that virtually any career might be a worthwhile way to spend a working life if it makes things slightly better for those it serves.

Furthermore. It means that if what we learn from the experience of the coronavirus pandemic is to become just a little more attuned to the needs of our neighbors, We'll have learned something valuable as a result of the great pause. No matter how far off the root and branch transformation of society remains. Cosmic insignificance therapy.

is an invitation to face the truth about your irrelevance in the grand scheme of things. To embrace it. To whatever extent you can. Isn't it hilarious in hindsight that you ever imagined things might be otherwise? Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks,

Isn't a matter of resolving to do something remarkable with them. In fact It entails precisely the opposite. refusing to hold them to an abstract and over demanding standard of remarkableness against which they can only ever be found wanting. And taking them instead on their own terms.

Dropping back down from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance. into the experience of life as it concretely, finitely. And often enough, marvelously, really is. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things.

articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.