Meditations for Mortals

March 20, 2026

Meditations for Mortals

Rating – 4 – Type: Self Improvement
Author – Oliver Burkeman

Summary: Life is messy. You will always have too much to do. You will always have problems. That’s just the way it is. Accept it and enjoy your life in all its messiness.

Despite the title, this is not a ‘how-to’ book on meditation; rather, it provides thought-provoking concepts for the reader to contemplate..

The past is gone and the future hasn’t occurred yet, so right now is the only time that really exists.

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TL;DR

The book’s structure is read one chapter a day for four weeks. All the chapters are short taking no more than 15 minutes to read. Each week stresses a different concept:

  • Week one – Being Finite
  • Week two – Taking Action
  • Week three – Letting Go
  • Week four – Showing Up

Week one day one begins with this ominous quote preparing the reader for what’s to come:

The most liberating and empowering and productive step you can take if you want to spend more time on the planet doing what matters to you, is to grasp the sense in which life as a finite human being – with limited time, and limited control over that time – is really worse than you think.

Week One lesson is we are all going to die, we can’t possibly do everything on our todo list. Come to terms with reality and enjoy the present.

Week two can be summarized with a slight twist on the Nike ad campaign – Just Do It. That is, quit worrying about the endless lists of things that need to be done. Pick one thing every morning and work on it forgetting about the list. “Just Do It” includes finishing; there is something magical about completing a task or project and marking it complete.

Week three recommends giving up on the struggle to maintain control every outcome, event, or person. Realize life’s journey is unpredictable beset by problems and interruptions. Those problems and interruptions are your life.

Week Four reinforces the previous three weeks wit the idea that life is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be inhabited. You will never reach a trouble-free phase therefore just start “doing” instead of waiting for the perfect time and place. Accept the mess and treat problems and interruptions as just part of life. Be in the present

You might easily never been born, but fate granted you the opportunity to get stuck in the mess you see around you, whatever it is. You are here. This is it.You don’t much matter – yet you matter as much as anyone else ever did. The rive of time flows inexorably on; amazingly, confoundingly, marvelously, we get the chance to go kayaking in it.

What we do here and now matters not in the Grand Scheme of the COSMOS

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GEB review

February 11, 2026

Rating: 5 of 5 – Type: Science

Just finished reading Godel, Escher,Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter today and celebrated. This is my third reading. There are still many sections I don’t really understand. Sum them all together and I can safely state I don’t understand what the tome is really trying to pass along to the readers. I asked Gemini what the book meant. It returned:

While Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (often called GEB) covers a dizzying array of topics—from protein synthesis to Zen koans—Douglas Hofstadter himself stated that the book is not actually about the “connections between math, art, and music.”

At its core, the book is about how consciousness and “self” emerge from “meaningless” matter.

Here’s what I wrote after my first reading:

  • Combine Art (Escher), Music (Bach), and Number Theory (Godel) and how they are all related through Math.
  • Transition from Math to Computers and Brains – especially how we learn and retain knowledge.
  • Then provide a short course in Molecular Biology and how it relates to the brain.
  • And conclude asking the question is there really Free Will and what is the meaning of life?

If you made it this far you may be asking yourself why did I give the book a 5 star rating. It caused me to think and think for a very long time and at its core although I recorded the type as Science it is really about Math.

Gemini stated GEB contains a dizzying array of topics. Here’s a few:

  • Bach
  • Fugues and Canons
  • isomorphism
  • Strange Loops – moving upwards or downwards through the levels of some hierarchical system we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started
  • All Cretans are liars – Epidemenides paradox
  • Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem
  • Formal Systems
  • Euclid and the beginning of mathematics
  • Peano Axioms
  • Software and recursion
  • Fibonacci numbers
  • Three layers of any communication
  • Propositional Calculus
  • Zen and Mumon
  • Fermat’s Last Theorem
  • Neurons
  • Molecular Biology
  • Origin of Life
  • Turing, Church, and Tarski
  • Ramanujan
  • What is AI
  • Fusion and fusion

If you got this far you have glimmer of the vast breath of the book. In the end after as is said and done there are still major areas of the book I don’t understand. Am I slow or does the book not make sense? I’ll close with the last sentence in the book:

I cannot express, of the beautiful many-voiced fugue of the human mind. And that is why in my book the three strands of Godel, Escher, and Bach are woven into an Eternal Golden Braid

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Posted by molson46

2025 Books

December 23, 2025

I’ve been an avid reader my entire life; 2025 was no exception. My favorite genre is Science Fiction. However, I attempt to read at least a dozen non-fiction books every year to expand my horizons so to speak.

This year I read 38 books, 14 of which were non fiction. The non-fiction books (plus two fiction) were:

TItle Author
Right Thing, Right Now Ryan Holiday
Einstein in Kafkaland Ken Krimstein
Meditations Marcus Aurelius
Tiny + Wild Graham Gardner
The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkhein
Tiny Experiments Anne-Laure Le Cunff
A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawkin
Big Jim and the White Boy David Walker & Marcus Anderson
The Light Eaters Zoe Schlanger
Eat That Frog Brian Tracy
Deliver Me From Nowhere Warren Zanes
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind Shunryu Suzuki
Goodbye, things Fumio Sasaki
Blue Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
Wisdom Takes Work Ryan Holiday
The Lord of the Rings J. R. R Tolkhein

Several of the books are re-reads.They belong to the half dozen books I attempt to re-read every few years because I enjoyed them immensely and every time I read them I gain new insights. This year’s were Meditations, A Brief History of Time, and The Lord of the Rings.

I included two fiction books this hear because they are excellent books I’d recommend to everyone:

  • Blue Mars is the third and final book in the Mars trilogy. They are science fiction. The book has a lot to think about concerning life, death, and society.
  • The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy book needing no introduction. I’ve read this really three books over and over since I was young and is one of my all time favorites.

I don’t ever have a favorite book or top five books. However, usually there are several I’d read again and several I would not recommend to anyone.

In addition to the three re-reads mentioned above I’ll put Wisdom Takes Work and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind on the shelf and consider reading them again.The former is the last book of the four part Stoic series and I’ve heard the best by far. Time after time I set the book down to just think. The later is a series of talks given by the author during their morning zazen. I don’t follow Zen but this book encouraged me to reflect on life.

Big Jim and the White Boy is not a book worth reading. It’s a graphic novel version of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the slave Jim. Read the original instead.

Before signing off I have to mention Tiny Experiments which is not a book to read over and over again as time rolls on but I started my own Tiny experiments and continue to do so. Might not be a book for everyone but a valuable addition to the lifelong learner’s toolbox.

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