Taking a bath, as the Victorian social critic Ambrose Bierce described it, is “a kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship.”

But what actually happens is that this overvaluing of your existence gives rise to an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar much too high. It suggests that in order to count as having been “well spent,” your life needs to involve deeply impressive accomplishments, or that it should have a lasting

We are conditioned to believe that in order to be productive and successful we must be constantly doing something. This belief, which forms the basis of modern society, is quite insane. We are not human doings; we are human beings.