Life Is a Death Sentence
Or, you can either get busy living or get busy dying
👋 Hey, Abhishek here! Welcome to The Sunday Wisdom. Each week I tackle fundamental questions about decision making, clear thinking, and anything else that’s stressing you out in the business of life. If you are here for the first time, please consider subscribing.
Last week was shocking! Sushant Singh Rajput, the 34yo Bollywood actor hanged himself in his Mumbai apartment. He was a good student as a kid, a talented actor, and a versatile person who dabbled in many subjects — from philosophy to quantum physics. He was allegedly suffering from depression.
I would be lying if I say that I understand depression. The closest I’ve come to encounter depression is from reading Matt Haig’s recount on Reasons to Stay Alive. It’s a tough read, but it paints a detailed picture of what depression feels like. The word gets passed around casually, but it’s very different from what we have been led to believe.
Depression is not just the presence of bad thoughts. It’s the total absence of any good thoughts. It’s a state when you lose all capability to process or experience any kind of joy. It’s a state when just being alive becomes painful, almost impossible. It’s when your head is full of so many negative thoughts that you aren’t even sure if these are actually yours or somebody else’s. We’ve all experienced bad episodes, but unless one has had an episode of depression themselves, it is literally impossible to understand what it feels like.
There doesn’t necessarily have to be any specific reason to suffer from depression. Sometimes a traumatic event can set it off. Often there may not be triggers. And like Alzheimer’s or Schizophrenia, it can be genetic as well.
The biggest problem is that nobody takes it seriously enough. Most of us neglect it. We don’t talk about it openly. It often goes undiagnosed. Tomorrow if you wake up with a back pain, you would make sure to sit correctly the whole day so that there’s not much pressure on it. If there’s too much pain, you would do some light exercise to work on it. If it’s severe, you’ll have to apply ointment. If it’s chronic, you’ll have to go see a doctor. Make sure to treat your mind the same way. It gets fatigued and bored. It needs nurturing. It needs your care to recover.
Arnold, you’re an idiot,” I told myself. “You spend all this time on your body, but you never think about your mind, how to make it sharper and relieve the stress. When you have muscle cramps, you have to do more stretching, take a Jacuzzi, put on the ice packs, take more minerals. So why aren’t you thinking that the mind also can have a problem? It’s overstressed, or it’s tired, it’s bored, it’s fatigued, it’s about to blow up — let’s learn tools for that.
— Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall
Q: If we’re all dying, what’s the point of living?
Life is a death sentence. We all die eventually. It can be sooner or later, but die we will. With that information, you can either get busy living, or get busy dying.
You are living when you take ownership of your problems. It doesn’t matter if you win or not, but you play every game with a sportsman’s mindset. You are living when you give every challenge, every competition, every problem your best effort.
You are living when you take hits but keep moving forward. You are living when you fall on the ground, but make an effort to bounce back, even though it feels impossible.
You are dying when you run on autopilot. You are dying when you sleepwalk through life. You are dying when you don’t have an overall life strategy. You are dying when you let your circumstances, or your bad luck, or the people around you get the better of you. You are dying when you don’t make the hard choices, and let others make them for you.
You are dying when you are not working towards your freedom and personal fulfilment. You are dying when you compromise personal fulfilment for material gain. You are dying when you don’t have anything to look forward to. You are dying when you don’t take up challenges because you are too afraid to lose. You are dying when you constantly engage in blaming — both yourself and others. You are dying when you complain about the cards life has dealt you.
A good life depends on your mental wellbeing. And mental wellbeing is never unplanned. It’s not something that just happens. It’s a conscious choice that you make, and it takes considerable effort. It starts off by getting to know yourself; when you ask yourself questions such as: Who am I? What is my purpose? What is personally important to me? What drives me to work on the things I like?
You may not want to save humanity like the others. Your primary motivation may not be to do something for your community, the society, or the nation. You may secretly dislike the members of your family, and your personal goal may be to get rich and get the hell outta here. It’s okay. Whatever are your answers, the only ultimate question you have to answer is, “Am I living a life, or am I living a lie?”
If you aren’t fulfilled or content, and yet you say that you are living an ideal life, your mind isn’t in the best possible shape. Be honest in your answers. The most honest answer is often the most selfish one.
As mentioned, the first step towards good mental health is knowing who we are. You cannot know who you are without self-reflection. Majority of us aren’t comfortable doing that. Those who do, aren’t very comfortable answering tough questions.
Here’s a personal example. I live with my girlfriend of 5 years. Every few days, I make sure I ask myself questions like: How much do I love her? What do I really mean when I say that I love her? How can I know that it’s not a lie I’m telling myself? What would life be if I lose her?
These are not easy questions, and there are no straightforward answers. Yet I ask them time and again. I do the same for other situations as well. Do I love my job enough? How much do I love to write? What kind of relationship do I want to build with my audience? Why?
The act of asking questions makes sure that you are in touch with your emotions, that you aren’t lying to yourself, and that you know the exact reasons behind why you do what you do. When you know what you are up to, you don’t let life slip away.
We cannot save ourselves from misfortune. Life is wicked, and no matter how hard you prepare, misfortune will find you. We often prepare ourselves either to achieve success or to prevent failure. The problem is, we are all experts at success. What we don’t prepare for is failure. What eventually is going to set you apart is how you deal with failure.
I’ve had consecutive business failures. Every time I gave everything I had, and still couldn’t succeed. But it doesn’t mean that I cannot try again in future. I’m still trying.
If we strive to grasp something more than our reach, we are going to meet failure every once in a while. Therefore it only makes sense that we get comfortable with feeling bad and dealing with failure. Let’s learn to leverage these negative emotions to drive ourselves to prepare better next time.
If recent events have shattered us, it’s only because our foundation wasn’t strong enough. Next time it would be better, and we should be stronger. Our past failures don’t define what happens in future. If we have a growth mindset, and we strive to improve with time, then trying to do something again later is only better. It increases our chances of success.
Even though it may feel like that, everything is not a crisis. It’s just your mental exaggeration. You spouse leaving you, you missing out on a promotion, or failing to crack an entrance exam is not the end of the world. It’s an unwelcome event yes, but it’s also an opportunity to develop some tolerance for failure.
If it hurts, cry your heart out. Then shake it off and get back in the game. Start afresh with a new day, a new challenge, a new business venture, or a new opportunity — either for success or for personal growth.
Interestingly, throughout my failures what remained constant was my love for what I did. If you have a strong “why” everything else will fall in place. A precursor to having a strong why is to be aware of what you want, and to do that you have to constantly ask questions to yourself, and explore the answers.
The reason why failure, sadness, and misfortune are inevitable is because you don’t control everything. Therefore it makes more sense to focus only on what you can control.
In a game of cricket, you cannot control the opponent’s mindset or strategy. In a job interview, you don’t control the interviewer’s opinion or attitude. While making an investment you don’t control the fear and greed of the market, or the schedule of a pandemic.
Make a list of the things you can control, and leave the rest to chance. In this game of skill and luck, only skill is in your control. Make the best use of it. It’s futile to try to control or worry about luck.
There’s no escape. Despite that, there will be suffering. But what you suffer isn’t any different from what countless others have suffered. You cannot control the pain, but you can control how you think about it.
Mental pain is a double edged sword. If you can yield it and redirect its energy, it can become a powerful weapon. Otherwise it can consume you.
During my teens I had a very nasty breakup. I spent my days moping and feeling sorry for myself. At some point I realised that this cannot go on forever and I gotta do something about it. The question I asked myself was, “What’s next?” It bypassed the self-pity and mental stagnation, and gave me a framework to redirect all these negative emotions into creative projects.
It was around that time that I started working on my first startup idea. It didn’t lead to a lot of success, but it did help me recover from the trauma.
When we don’t feel good, most of us know what will make us feel better. It’s usually some combination of exercise, side project, time with friends, etc. But we usually avoid these things when we are down and out. We don’t do that not because of ignorance, but because we are no longer motivated to do them. Rather, we wait until we feel better without doing anything about them. Often, it’s a long wait.
Happiness is the ultimate risk. You strive for something, and when you don’t achieve it, it makes you feel sad. Therefore it’s only better not to take any action, and blame it all on misfortune, bad fate, and other things that aren’t in our control, right?
What if we change that? What if we focus on joy instead of happiness? What if we focus on mental fulfilment rather than material gain? What if we try out a lot of things, and be okay with failure? What if we focus on the effort rather than the outcome? What if we accept ourselves just the way we are — with all our idiosyncrasies and imperfections? What if we strive to become a better version of ourselves? What if we try to go to bed smarter than we woke up? What if we strive to fight for something bigger than us?
Once in a while, what if we focus your attention on others — our parents, our friends, our partners, or our pets — and make it a point to bring them joy? How does that sound?
Life is not easy. Life is wicked. Life is not fair. It never was, it isn’t now, it won’t ever be. You can either sit and mope and blame and complain, or you can accept it, take responsibility, and make an effort to do something.
You can either get busy living, or get busy dying.
Little Bits of Wisdom
Richard Feynman cared about the physics, not the physicist. If somebody said something absurd he called it crazy right away. It didn’t matter if that person was a Nobel laureate. On the other hand, if somebody says something smart, it didn’t matter if they were a janitor.
Don’t bow to the expert. They are either lucky or good storytellers. There are really no “experts”. Listen to reason, and reason alone.
I Enjoyed Reading
On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs — “If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath—a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path.”
On Coding, Ego and Attention — “My thoughts on coding, ego and attention. How I learned to get out of my own way by learning about this link between ego and attention.”
Who Are the Elites? — “Elites are a small segment of the society who concentrate social power in their hands. What is social power? The ability to influence other people’s behaviour.”
The list of all the articles I’ve written can be found here. And the past three editions of Sunday Wisdom are here: 42, 41, and 40.
An Interesting Find
Most adults I know sleep in a monophasic pattern—one long and single bout of slumber at night. But in certain cultures, especially in the Bengali culture where I come from, it’s very common to sleep in a biphasic pattern—long sleep period at night followed by a thirty- to sixty-minute nap in the afternoon. Whenever I visit my parents in Kolkata, I find myself taking a good sixty-minute nap in the afternoon. To be honest, it’s very refreshing.
Contrary to what I thought, the practice of biphasic sleep is not cultural per se; it is deeply biological. All humans have a genetically hardwired dip in alertness that occurs in the mid-afternoon hours. Ever attended a post-lunch meeting?
But if this is our natural pattern, are there any health consequences due to our abandonment of the biphasic sleep? Let’s find out!
In the 1980s, the Greeks were known for their siesta culture. Shops were closed at noon, say from one p.m. to five p.m. for the owners to enjoy a refreshing nap. But during the turn of the millennium, there was an increasing pressure to abandon this habit—all in the name of increasing productivity.
Researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health jumped at this opportunity, and decided to quantify the health consequences of this radical change in more than 23,000 adults. They focused on cardiovascular outcomes—tracking the group across a six-year period as the siesta practice started coming to an end for many of them.
Interestingly, none of the individuals had a history of coronary heart disease or stroke at the start of the study—indicating the absence of cardiovascular ill health. However, those that abandoned regular siestas went on to suffer a 37 percent increased risk of death from heart disease across the six-year period—relative to those who maintained regular daytime naps.
As Matthew Walker writes in Why We Sleep:
Apparent from this remarkable study is this fact: when we are cleaved from the innate practice of biphasic sleep, our lives are shortened. It is perhaps unsurprising that in the small enclaves of Greece where siestas still remain intact, such as the island of Ikaria, men are nearly four times as likely to reach the age of ninety as American males. These napping communities have sometimes been described as “the places where people forget to die.”
The most interesting fact from the Greek study (or perhaps the Greek tragedy) was that the effect of abandoning afternoon siestas was especially strong in working men—the ensuing mortality risk of not napping increased by well over 60 percent.
If you have the luxury of working from home during the lockdown, you know what to do in the afternoon. And if your boss is making you attend post-lunch meetings, do share this fact with them.
I Enjoyed Watching
This week I watched too many videos on comic books and movies. Here are a few that stood out.
Snowpiercer: Can We Build a Better World? — This is one of those movies where the more you think about it, the better it starts getting. I’m a sucker for multilayered storytelling. “Bong Joon Ho is all the rave and rightly so. That’s why we thought it’d be a good time to take a look back at his 2013 film, Snowpiercer. At first an apparently simple critique of global capitalism, we discovered there’s SO much more than meets the eye.”
Iron Man vs. Captain America — The 11-Year Character Arc — “The Marvel Cinematic Universe, also known as the Infinity Saga, features multifaceted, three-dimensional characters. In particular, Iron Man and Captain America have compelling and complete arcs that span the series’ impressive run.”
Watchmen Explained — Alan Moore created something very different with the original Watchmen in 1986. It’s a superhero story that questions the very idea of a superhero. The story is set around flawed characters, moral ambiguity, philosophy, and politics—which was unusual at the time.
Worth Thinking About
We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we’d make a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better.
— Sergey Brin
What I Did Last Week
I read In Defense of Food. It’s a bit odd that food needs defending. But once you read it you start to understand what we are eating isn’t really food. At least not how nature meant it to be.
Pollan mainly talks about the American diet and the western disease, but it isn’t a problem that is limited to the US alone. Here in India as well it’s the same, especially in the metros. If there’s a supermarket, chances are they aren’t serving real food. They serve processed or synthetic food.
The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power—thirty-two billion dollars a year—used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat.
My main goal is to read Pollan’s Food Rules. I’ve treated this book as a precursor to that. Yes, I definitely enjoyed reading it. Pollans talks about “nutritionism” which is very similar to Taleb’s scientism. This book is a study of research done badly and unethically to serve capitalism. I’ve got nothing against capitalism, but I’ve got a tonne of disregard for people who are devoid of ethics, don’t have skin in the game, and follow reductionist methods in the name of research.
Go read the book. If you won’t, at least eat food; not too much; mostly plants.
Before You Go…
Thanks so much for reading! Send me ideas, questions, reading recs. You can write to abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com, reply to this email, or use the comments.
Until next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋
Life Is A Death Sentence is the first post I've read. Thank you, Sir, for the writing.