What Heidegger Can Teach Us About Time, Mortality, and Why Life Feels So Short
There’s a moment most people hit at some point in their twenties, thirties, or even much later, the moment when time stops feeling like an endless horizon and starts feeling strangely finite. You look out and realize that whole years have gone by without you
noticing quite how. (This feelings is especially potent in December) This is one of the core ideas in Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: the average lifespan gives us about four thousand weeks to work with. Seeing the number written out is jarring, but
it also brings something important into focus.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger spent much of his career trying to get people to confront this exact reality: that being human means living within limits, and that our relationship with time is central to everything we do. Now, Heidegger is famously difficult
to read, but his insights become surprisingly straightforward when connected to modern life.
What follows is a more conversational walk through these ideas, with videos to deepen the experience if certain ideas spark something in you.
We Don’t Just Live in Time , We are Time
Most of us think of time as something outside ourselves — the clock on the wall, the dates on a calendar, the schedule we try to keep. Heidegger flips this idea completely. He argues that we are fundamentally temporal beings. Everything about us is shaped by
time: the memories we carry, the actions we take now, and the possibilities we imagine or fear in the future.
This short animated explanation does a great job introducing the idea in a way that doesn’t require a background in philosophy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Heidegger’s point is that our past, present, and future aren’t separate compartments. They’re woven together. Your identity is constantly unfolding across time, and because of that, you aren’t a fixed thing. You’re a process. You’re always becoming.
When you really sit with this idea, the modern obsession with “time management” starts to feel a little mismatched. You can’t “manage” time the same way you manage money or tasks. You are time. The question isn’t how to squeeze more into your schedule; it’s
how to live well within the limits built into your existence.
Finitude: Why Our Limits Give Life Meaning
One of Heidegger’s biggest insights is that humans are finite. We don’t have infinite years. We don’t have endless chances. Because of that, every choice we make matters.
This is where the idea of opportunity cost becomes emotional instead of economic. Every time you choose one thing, you are giving up countless others. That can feel stressful, but Heidegger and later philosophers like Martin Hägglund argue that this is exactly
what gives life meaning. If you could do everything, nothing would feel significant.
Oliver Burkeman talks about this beautifully in this interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
He explains that people often imagine that if they just organized better, they could truly “get everything done.” But the truth is deeper: the desire to do everything comes from a refusal to accept our limits. Anyone can make a to-do list. The challenge is
acknowledging you’ll never finish it, then choosing what matters anyway.
Instead of seeing finitude as something tragic, Heidegger frames it as the very condition that makes love, creativity, and commitment possible. If you had infinite time, nothing would feel urgent. Nothing would feel special. Our limits don’t reduce us. They
define us.
Authenticity vs. Autopilot Living
Heidegger describes two basic modes of being human: authenticity and falling (sometimes called “the they-self”). These sound dramatic, but they’re actually very familiar.
Authenticity is when you live with full awareness of your finite time. You don’t pretend you’re immortal. You take responsibility for your choices. You allow yourself to feel the weight (and the gift) of your time being limited.
Autopilot is the opposite. It’s the state most people fall into without noticing. You drift. You go along with what others are doing. You chase distractions or busywork. You tell yourself you’ll “start living your real life” later, even though later never comes.
Heidegger doesn’t think falling is a moral failure. It’s simply part of being human. The danger is when we get stuck there, when our whole life becomes something we sleepwalk through. Awareness of finitude pulls us out of autopilot. It wakes us up.
Why Thinking About Death Isn’t Morbid
A surprising part of Heidegger’s thought is his insistence that confronting death directly is essential for living well. Not in a dark or melodramatic way, but in a truthful one. Death isn’t an event that happens only at the end of life. It’s a presence that
shapes life now.
Most people avoid thinking about death because they assume it’s depressing. But Heidegger argues the opposite. The denial of death is what traps us. When we don’t face our mortality, we make shallow choices. We procrastinate. We hide from what matters.
But when we do face it, honestly and quietly, something shifts. Priorities clarify. Petty stresses shrink. Love becomes more vivid. Presence becomes possible.
This gentle video captures how a brush with mortality changes the way time feels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
People who have near-death experiences often report that the world doesn’t look different, they do. They start paying attention. They start noticing the small miracles. They stop assuming they’ll always have more time. That isn’t sadness. It’s awakening.
Your Choices Create You
If time is limited, and if we are beings stretched across time, then every choice you make has a shaping effect on who you become. You don’t just make choices. Your choices make you.
This theme appears repeatedly in Four Thousand Weeks: the idea that our lives gain meaning not from doing everything, but from committing to some things and letting others go. Scarcity is unavoidable. But it’s also the source of meaning.
The alternative is trying to keep every option open forever. But options aren’t a life. Choices are.
Living with Time Instead of Fighting It
Once you accept all of this, that time is limited, that you are a temporal being, and that your choices define you, a surprising sense of calm can set in. You stop trying to dominate time. You stop trying to outrun it. Instead, you start trying to live with
it.
This doesn’t solve everything. You’ll still get busy. You’ll still get overwhelmed. You’ll still have days where time feels too fast or too slow. But a deeper awareness begins to grow: your weeks are precious not because they are many, but because they are
yours.
And that is enough.
Good luck everyone, I hope we all make A’s.
What Heidegger Can Teach Us About Time.docx
"the moment when time stops feeling like an endless horizon and starts feeling strangely finite" - I imagine that moment comes at very different times for different folk. For me I think it began when our daughters were born, and was cemented when my parents died. That's when I really began to internalize the vision of time as charting a vast parade of humanity stretching beyond the horizon in both directions... so, "strangely finite" and yet still "endless," somehow.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. My consideration of finitude also began when my dad died. Heidegger is right about death being a powerful source of connection that we ignore because it makes us uncomfortable. It's probably very common that one's genuine contemplation about finitude is rapidly accelerated by familial death. That logic seems to check out, but we don't talk about it enough to investigate.
DeleteThe statement "We don't inhabit time, we ARE time" becomes a lot less cryptic when we stare death in the face. And if we can then move beyond that moment of reckoning (while retaining its important message), we've achieved a kind of transcendence. ("Trans-end-dance, the ability to move beyond the end... aka the dance of death." Peter Ackroyd)
ReplyDelete