# Four thousand weeks
source: https://ift.tt/hL4xzMq tags: #literature #insights #living-well uid: 202301260144 —
We are forced to accept that there will always be too much to do; that you can’t make the world run at your preferred speed and so there are tough choices to be made: which balls to let drop, which people to disappoint, which cherished ambitions to abandon, which roles to fail at.
Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for.
Other human beings are always impinging on your time in countless frustrating ways. In an ideal world the only person making decisions about your time is you. This comes at a cost that’s not worth paying.
I used to think that having to coordinate schedules and plans with other people was not worth my time. I was so mistaken.
However, the two things must be mingled and varied, solitude and joining a crowd: the one will make us long for people and the other for ourselves, and each will be a remedy for the other; solitude will cure our distaste for a crowd, and a crowd will cure our boredom with solitude.