How Many Weeks Might We Have?

It was smaller than eighteen years had sounded, and larger than they had pictured when they thought of a week.

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

Picture a couple named Warren, 66, and Edna, 64. Warren is reading a book called Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The starting point of the book is a plain one. An eighty-year life is about four thousand weeks.

Edna did the arithmetic at the kitchen table. Eighty years times 52 weeks is 4,160 weeks. "And you are 66," she said. "That is already about 3,400 of them."

"Thanks," Warren said.

"I mean it kindly. I would like to see how many are left." She looked up the numbers the Social Security Administration publishes.

(Social Security Administration period life table for 2023. The weeks are the years times 52, rounded to the nearest ten. These are averages for everyone at that age, not a forecast for any one person.)

Warren looked at the 65 row. "Nine hundred and forty."

"Mine is a thousand and seventy," Edna said. "I will be watching you."

They looked at the number for a while. It was smaller than eighteen years had sounded, and larger than they had pictured when they thought of a week.

"I spent a lot of weeks on nothing," Warren said.

"We both did. Now I want to think about the next nine hundred."

They made a list. It had a trip with the children, a month in a city they had never seen, and a year of Tuesday lunches with Edna's sister. Warren added a line at the bottom: "Something small every week."

I am not suggesting anyone treat their time as a countdown. I only find that the number makes plain what a week is worth.