In today’s episode, two professors discuss how we should live when facing limited time. What does it mean to live each day like it’s your last? Is that a bad idea?
You’ll hear from Lydia Dugdale, a medical ethicist at Columbia, and Timothy Bono, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). They explore why considering our mortality is important for living well and what practical steps one can take to live intentionally. Their conversation is moderated by Nic Koziolek, a lecturer in philosophy at WashU.
This forum was held at WashU in April 2023. Thank you to the forums team for making this event possible.
Lydia Dugdale
Timothy Bono
The art of dying well and the art of living well are very much intertwined.
It's important for us to acknowledge the impermanence of life, that what we have is not going to last forever.
Essential to living well and dying well is nurturing relationships.
The 'wow factor' is that there is no 'wow factor' to happiness. It's not about some huge vacation, the big salary, or the big house. It's really about the accumulation of those small daily, intentional behaviors that we incorporate into our living that, over time, contribute to a sense of well-being.
A practice that all of us can habituate is thinking of what matters most and how we live each day.
The way that we live is the way that we die.
When you look at the science of happiness, there's a term called "hedonic adaptation" — we quickly and easily adapt to what we have and take it for granted.
If I only had a week left, I would want to spend as much time as I could with my loved ones. And I would probably spend a lot of time writing gratitude letters to people who had impacted me and let them know how much they mean to me.
