In the Long Run, We’re All Dead by Terry Carroll During Downtown Octoberfest in September (only in St. Thomas, my friends), my lovely wife Nancy and I bumped into Patti and Dave, a couple we don’t see often enough. With Patti,
for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and, Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done. The introduction to Four Thousand Weeks is titled, In the Long Run, We’re All Dead. And the opening line from the book is, ‘The average human life is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.’. Assuming we live (if we’re lucky) to age 80, we each have about 4,000 weeks on this mortal coil. What are we going to do with these weeks? Which brings us to Time Management for Mortals. Burkeman’s premise — the big revelation of his life after years of trying and failing to be a supremely productive efficiency guru — is that most of the self-help advice is flat- out wrong. Forget time management. Time can be lived. It cannot be managed. This has been true all our lives but as we age, it becomes self-evident. It’s Thursday -- garbage and recycling day. Turn around and it’s Thursday -- garbage and recycling day. Another of our 4,000 weeks, gone. Poof! A grandkid enters high school, a time that seems to the kid to take forever. But to grandpa and grandma, that kid goes from Grade Nine to Grade Twelve in a few shakes of a lamb’s tail. And so on. There’s no point in whining about this. There is a point to accepting it. Stop feeling bad about never getting enough done. Quit believing you’ll ever manage time. Nobody can. By Burkeman’s calculator, I’ve lived some 3,750 weeks, with about 250 weeks left, if I’m lucky. You and I, dear reader, need to choose three areas that are important to us, and focus. There isn’t time for more. I hope you enjoyed Downtown Octoberfest in September. If you didn’t, don’t worry. The next one’s just around the corner. Terry can be reached at terry@carrollgroup.ca. He might reply, if he has time.
we go way back to our newspaper days. Her husband, Dave, is one of many workers laid off when the Ford plant closed 14 years ago. I asked if he still sees people from Ford. “Not often enough.” However, he had just spotted a couple of the guys at Octoberfest, and they had kicked around the topic of losing contact with your fellow workers. “There’s no time,” Dave said. “I’ve never been so busy. That’s one reason I never see people.” Constantly, seniors say a version of, “I don’t know how I found time to do anything when I was working.” Where does time go? Poets and preachers, songwriters and seniors, have been addressing this question since Eve made a little apple fall from a tree. Shortly after Octoberfest in September, my little sister recommended a book called Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management for Mortals , by Oliver Burkeman. I like the titles of his two other books even more: The Antidote: Happiness Geoffrey Rae Managing Editor / Sales Geoff@villagerpublications.com 519-495-7177 Copy Editor: Peter Bloch-Hansen Publisher: Barb Botten barb@villagerpublications.com Graphic Artist – Cathy Wood Photos, community events and article suggestions welcome. Please email hometown@villagerpublications.com. We look forward to hearing from you. oomers oomers B and B EYOND
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Page 14 Boomers and Beyond – Elgin • November 2025
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