Before you die: get a life

Currently reading Help! Oliver Burkeman’s wonderfully-engaging book on the self-help and psychology world, based on his regular column in The Guardian. There’s plenty in it, so I doubt this will be my last sampling, yet one recently-read passage has already caused me to nod in agreement: on those “things to see/do before you die” books.

My objection to these books isn’t their content, which is little more than a ranking of places, cities, films, books, hotels etc: vertical guide books, if you like. It’s the notion that we must see and do certain things to have lived the required “good life”. Such lists discourage us from pursuing a good life, defined by our own values and desires and standards. This is shallow in the extreme: life as a “seen that, done this” box-ticking experience that will surely leave us in despair – there being a near-endless supply of boxes to tick in order to prevent feelings of inadequacy.

Burkeman, meanwhile, is surprised by the phrase “before you die” – finding it a strange concept to embrace in a culture “so intent on avoiding thinking about death”. Instead, he recommends the Russ Harris approach. In The Happiness Trap the psychologist sought perspective in the pursuit of the good life by suggesting that we transport ourselves to our 80th birthday and ask ourselves two specific questions.

1) “I spent too much time worrying about….”
2) “I spent too little time doing things such as….”

As an exercise this is not dissimilar to the goal-setting recommendations of many self-help gurus who ask us to imagine our own funeral in order that we can judge whether we took the right path prior to our arrival at this final destination. That said, the guru’s exercises also cause me to react. Again, they subject us to what others think of our life, rather than encouraging us to properly evaluate what we want (our funerals inevitably being judged by the number and quality of attendees and by the speeches given on our behalf). Hence Harris’s questions being a refreshing alternative to both the “before you die” fashionable-life fascism and the “live a good life” (according to others) fashionable-funeral fascism.

This still leaves us with the dilemma of answering Harris’s questions, however. Here’s my go (done in 10 minutes over an early-morning coffee):

1) I spent too much time worrying about....
....trying to become somebody I wasn’t.
....other people’s principles rather than my own.
....being liked by shallow people.
....what I must see before I die.

2) I spent too little time doing things such as....
....following my own path.
....enjoying the moment.
....enjoying my own family.
....telling fashionable thinkers where to get off.

That said, I’m guessing my funeral might not be the event of the century.