We Are All Dying...so why not read like it matters?

I often joke that even if I never become interested in anything else or add anything new to my list of books to read, movies to watch, music to listen to, things to write, art to make, places to go and so on, that I am busy for at least the next 800 years. But alas, I don't have 800 more years thus each act of deciding to, is also an act of deciding not to.

I confess that I will often calculate how many hours, days, weeks, months are left in a specific increment of time. A search result that is often as humbling as it is inspiring. In this myriad calculations, I confess that I had not yet pondered how many more books I might read during this one, precious, life.

Luckily for me and for you dear readers, Emily Temple of Literary Hub did. In her lovely reflection, "How Many Books Will You Read Before You Die", she attempts to answer that question.  

There are millions of books in the world (and almost definitely hundreds of millions—as of 2010, Google had the count at 129,864,880). The rabid and/or competitive readers among you will now be asking yourselves: yes, yes, now how will I read them all?

Well, you won’t.

There is a certain dread and jubilation over those two simple words, "you won't". It is indeed impossible to read them all but there is also time to read so many books. You might not be able to be a super-hero, but you can most certainly become a super-reader. There is still lots of time to read, to read with intention, and recognize, that if you can't read everything, you can certainly enjoy all the things you do get to read.

Want to think more about living with intention?Join our next co-hort of We Are All Dying.