When you’re 52, the clock ticks louder.

Kurt Andersen: It's too preachy for me to suggest what everybody should be asking ourselves. What I ask myself increasingly, as I get closer to the end of my life, than the beginning, is the sense of what do I want to do in these minutes and hours and days remaining to bring pleasure, joy, excitement, entertainment, illumination into the world?  Which is a decent thing for everybody to be asking themselves.

But when you're 52 as opposed to 32, the ticking clock of the end is louder. And therefore I think that the question needs to be asked more squarely and forthrightly to one's self; not every hour, not every day necessarily, but regularly.  How are you making your little corner of the world a more civilized, decent, interesting place? 

Recorded On: July 5, 2007