Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Steve Jobs
We don’t think about it often enough because it’s not easy. How could it be? Imagining a time when we are no longer here and facing the emotions of leaving everyone we love has to be heart breaking. It rattles us that although we have dutifully accepted the art of living it pains us that one day, without knowing the day or the hour, it will all be taken away from us, without warning, without a word, at any moment, at any time.
We cannot do anything about death, we can only extend our life and choose to make it more meaningful, but death itself is one of the strongest forces we can harness.
Your dreams cannot wait. They shouldn’t wait. Your dreams and your big decisions in life need to be counter weighed about the possibility of not getting another chance to have the first chance in the first place. We lull ourselves to a comfortable slumber over time. We rock along with others, moving from one day to the next, pretending timidly that we have a lot of time and infinite number of opportunities to play shy and avoid life.
I dream of Heaven like anyone else, but Heaven must be an extension of our dreams while we are alive. How can you dream of a paradise, not willing to sweat and toil in the small sandbox of paradise that you’ve been given, right here now?
Death is a sobering thought and like fear, instead of breaking your spirit, it can make everything more clear. Death has a great purpose. It aims to show you what is important and real, and what to separate what is simply made up and forgettable.
Don’t let what other people expect from you, or your thoughts of perfections, and especially all your fears and failures of the past stop you from being the best person you can choose to be. None if it matters in the face of death. When a person we love dies; all is forgiven, so why can’t we offer this forgiveness to ourselves and to others while we and they are still alive.
There will be a day really soon, when you will no longer be alive and that in some sense is tragic. What is more tragic is living the life of a automaton. An unfulfilled, predetermined, desperate life.
Don’t let death scare you and bring you to your knees. Use it as a guide you in knowing what’s truly important.Take the less travelled road. The one that looks difficult and untrodden. Use death as a tool, and your soul will be much better for it.
