Napping, Distractions and Human Limitation
4000 weeks isn't a lot of weeks
I am currently reading the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman. The book has prompted me to think differently about the notion of time, most notably, how we humans each live out the approximately four thousand weeks we have here on this earth. Burkeman argues that we often think about time as a kind of currency we each have to spend, often using it for the things that matter little to us or stress us out.
This morning I was reading Burkeman’s chapter on distractions, and how distractions, at their core, are one an attempt to flee an encounter with our human finitude and avoid sometimes what really matters most to us. Distractions may be used as a means of not dealing with whatever is unfolding in this particular moment in time. “With the human predicament of having limited time…” he writes, “distractions are just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.” (Burkeman, 105, 107)
Of course this got me thinking about napping. Are naps a distraction from the moment at hand? Or a leaning into our human finitude? Burkeman writes, “You’ll find some way to relieve the pain by distracting yourself: by daydreaming, taking an unnecessary nap…” For some, that may be true. But for me, lying down on the couch, listening to the silence, closing my eyes, is taking twenty minutes to come to terms with my incredibly beautiful finitude on this earth.