“Obviously, from any ordinary perspective, **this all sounds intolerably morbid and stressful**. But then, to the extent that you manage to achieve this outlook on life, you’re not seeing it from an ordinary perspective—and “morbid and stressful,” at least according to [[Heidegger]], are exactly what it is not. “On the contrary, **it’s the only way for a finite human being to live fully**, to relate to other people as full-fledged humans, and to experience the world as it truly is. What’s really morbid, from this perspective, is what most of us do, most of the time, instead of confronting our finitude, which is to indulge in avoidance and denial, or what [[Heidegger]] calls “falling.” **Rather than taking ownership of our lives, we seek out distractions, or lose ourselves in busyness and the daily grind**, so as to try to forget our real predicament. Or we try to avoid the intimidating responsibility of having to decide what to do with our finite time by telling ourselves that we don’t get to choose at all—that we must get married, or remain in a soul-destroying job, or anything else, simply because it’s the done thing. **Or, as we saw in the previous chapter, we embark on the futile attempt to “get everything done,” which is really another way of trying to evade the responsibility of deciding what to do with your finite time**—because if you actually could get everything done, you’d never have to choose among mutually exclusive possibilities. “**Life is usually more comfortable when you spend it avoiding the truth in this fashion. But it’s a stultifying, deadly sort of comfort**. It’s only by facing our finitude that we can step into a truly authentic relationship with life. --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[momento-mori]], [[attention]], [[acceptance]], [[personal-values]], [[discipline]], [[self-control]], [[making-decisions]], [[character]], [[work-life-balance]], **Source** -- [[202410130434 - B - Four Thousand Weeks]]