The Wit's Guide to Death

Or, spoiler alert

Quakers in their boots, Edward Hull, 1820, National Library of Medicine

There are many ways to think about death, even more ways to not think about death, and only one conclusion. As Philip Larkin (d. 1985) sums up in his poem Aubade:

Most things may never happen: this one will.

But the most 2022 way to think about death is as the ultimate productivity hack, the swipe of the scythe after which there is no more getting things done. Oliver Burkeman’s clever analysis of mortality through the lens of productivity makes this point perfectly in its title: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Open your calendar app, flip it to week-at-a-glance view, imagine 4000 of those, and … that’s it. After that: inbox zero.

“Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”
— Saul Bellow (d. 2005)

Burkeman threads the needle between philosophy and self-help better than anyone, and his summation is freeing: Your four thousand weeks have never not been running out. “You come to see that the terrible eventuality against which you’d spent your life subliminally tensing your muscles, because it would be too appalling to experience, has already happened,” he writes, “and here you are, still alive, at least for the time being.” So enjoy yourself; it’s later than you think. And maybe don’t worry so much about email.

“The living are the dead on holiday.”
— Maurice de Maeterlinck (d. 1949)

In The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Burkeman’s earlier and equally recommended book, he visits Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico to find “a strange mixture of Christian and pre-Christian religions, mourning and humour” in which it is “commonplace for colleagues to write comic poetry to each other, predicting the manner in which they might die.” He also serves up this great line:

“Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
— Inspector Mortimer in Memento Mori by Muriel Spark (d. 2006)

Hence the wit’s solution: Joking about mortality. We laugh at things that violate norms and don’t make sense, so why not laugh in the face of death? That, after all, is how Bill and Ted thwarted him in Bogus Journey.

“Death has got something to be said for it:
There’s no need to get out of bed for it;
Wherever you may be,
They bring it to you, free.”
— Kingsley Amis (d. 1995)

Joking about death doesn’t mean you have to like it — though the cleverest argument for kicking the bucket considers what would happen if said bucket were left unkicked, forever.

“If Death were truly conquered, there would be
Too many great-great-great-great aunts to see.”
— L.E. Jones (d. 1969)

And that’s what brings it back to the very finite amount of you can get done before the ultimate deadline. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard writes “life is a gamble at terrible odds—if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.” So take the advice they give gamblers: Know your limit and play within it.

“Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.”
— Wilson Mizner (d. 1933)

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Quote Vote

“How many visions of eternity have been born of low blood sugar?”
— Robertson Davies (d. 1995)

Last week I offered up breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner — and you picked death. Can you imagine the poor waiter tasked with relaying your order to the kitchen? So let’s have another look at the menu:

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Speaking of…

Comic pessimism

Decline & fall for fun & profit

Mordant wit

The joy of succinct sadness

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That was the 172nd issue of Get Wit Quick, a memento mori for your inbox. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting was published in 2014, so the last copy will have disintegrated well before the heat death of the universe.  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and tap the ❤️ below.