Linda Holmes wrote a fantastic article for NPR called "The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything". In it, Linda talks about the calculation of how much human culture there is in the world to be experienced and how little could actually be experienced by any of us in our finite lifetime. (A realization I made as a pre-teen that really rocked my world.)

We could do the same calculus with film or music or, increasingly, television – you simply have no chance of seeing even most of what exists. Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.

She goes on to offer us a two pronged prescription. Surrender and culling.

Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It's the sorting of what's worth your time and what's not worth your time. It's saying, "I deem Keeping Up With The Kardashians a poor use of my time, and therefore, I choose not to watch it." It's saying, "I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six times, so I'm not going to read this one."

Wow! Read that 3 times and really internalize it. That's powerful stuff, and it's the reason I created BubbleTimer.

Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time...

As much as I liked her praise of culling, Linda makes an interesting case that often too much emphasis is put on culling and not enough on surrender, and that excessive culling can lead to a snobbish and elitist perspective on the world, and what in it is worth our time. 

The same goes for throwing out foreign films, documentaries, classical music, fantasy novels, soap operas, humor, or westerns. I see people culling by category, broadly and aggressively: television is not important, popular fiction is not important, blockbuster movies are not important. Don't talk about rap; it's not important. Don't talk about anyone famous; it isn't important. And by the way, don't tell me it is important, because that would mean I'm ignoring something important, and that's ... uncomfortable. That's surrender.

Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery. Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad. That's the moment you realize you're separated from so much. That's your moment of understanding that you'll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there's something being performed somewhere in the world that you're not seeing that you would love.

It's sad, but it's also ... great, really. Imagine if you'd seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you're "supposed to see." Imagine you got through everybody's list, until everything you hadn't read didn't really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

It's an insightful essay, and well worth the quick read. My only reservation is with its emphasis on consumption of culture rather than creation of culture. We often spend so much timing consuming culture (watching, reading, listening, etc.) that we cheat ourselves out of time to create.

You don't have to write as well as Dostoyevsky to have writing be a more personally valuable use of your time than reading. Dostoyevsky didn't always to write as well as Dostoyevsky! You have to give yourself the time to create poorly, it can be more rewarding than consuming others' greatness, and its the only chance you've got at achieving greatness of your own.