Great Question

Monday, 30th of October 2023  

Introducing you to the power of asking questions one Great Question at a time.

How many ocean swims have you left?

I derived the question from the essay “The Tail End” by Tim Urban. It is about how to measure and use the time we have left. The author was 34, my age, when he wrote the piece. Instead of measuring his life in units of time, he focuses on activities and events. Optimistically assuming that he lives healthily into his 90s, so still a very, very long time, he calculated that he has only 56 winters left. 56! For me, even worse, that means 56 summers…

 I love swimming in the ocean, so this one was shocking too:

“I tend to limit myself to around one ocean swim a year. So as weird as it seems, I might only go in the ocean 60 more times.”

If you are a book lover, this one might hit you even harder:

“I read about five books a year, so even though it feels like I’ll read an endless number of books in the future, I actually have to choose only 300 of all the books out there to read and accept that I’ll sign off for eternity without knowing what goes on in all the rest.”

My first reaction was:

What can I do to double the amount of ocean swims until I die?

How can I achieve reading more books per year?

 But then I realized that this might be the wrong approach. We must change the questions to change the perspective.

Instead of asking yourself:

 “How can I spend more time at the beach?”

ask

“How can I get more out of the remaining swims and enjoy them even more?”

 Instead of asking yourself:

“How can I manage reading more books?”

ask

“What can I do to internalize the things I read more profoundly so that I truly get something out of it that brings more meaning to my life?”

 The most drastic part - and here we come to the "tail end" -  is the time left with certain people in our lives.

“It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end… When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.”

And of course your first immediate question here will be:

“How can I spend more time with my parents, grandparents and siblings?”

The truth is: It will NEVER be enough! You could always do MORE. The more helpful question might be:

“What can I do to make the time we have left together more meaningful?”

Says the woman who spontaneously booked a flight to the Pacific Ocean in Mexico, to increasing the number of her remaining ocean dips :)

To many more swims in the sea, hasta la próxima,

Johanna

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