Thoughts on life and death

On life and death

I've been thinking about mortality a lot recently - thanks for a few books that I have read this past month. The first - Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande - has made me think about aging and what the final years of my life will bring. Following that, I read Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, which argues that the currency of life should be life experiences over money. Both of these books have reminded me of possibly my favorite blog post of all time on the internet - The Tail End on Wait but Why. This blog post beautifully illustrates how finite life really is. If you or I live to 90 years, we only have X number of Christmases, X days at the beach, and/or X days with our parents left.

Although a somber thought, I think there's optimism in this thinking as well. Stoicism takes this idea further with the quote "Momento Mori" - Remember you must die. The idea is that today may be your last day to live, so live your life as if it were. If today was your last day to live, what would you do differently? How would you handle your actions and responses with others? What would you spend your time doing? Momento Mori is a great reminder for me to slow down when I am frustrated, and to be a little more patient with someone. Beyond that, though, thinking about death has been reminding me that there is more to life than working and acquiring money.

The currency of life experiences

In Die With Zero, Bill Perkins recommends listing out all the activities you want to do in your life. I originally spent around 20 minutes on this exercise, and honestly my list was (and still is) pretty weak. Does that mean I'm a man of simple tastes? Maybe, although I feel like I enjoy adventure and travel quite a bit. I think it's more that I've never given myself permission to dream this big before. I've always just thought about life in a few year increments. I think I've planned fairly well for my 3-5 year horizon, but I've never gone past that, and even then, life experiences were always the lowest priority categories in my plans. Work always came first.

Over the past few weeks, I've been coming back to the list and adding to it. It's been a great paradigm shift to make this list my "dream big list". The Buried Life had a great list that I used as some inspiration, although they had quite a few items that I didn't care about. It's been nice to think, "if I had the ability to do anything, what would those anythings be?" I'd challenge you to do the same.

Following this list, Bill recommends you bucket your life into 5 year increments based on your age, and then place those activities in the age ranges that make the most sense. Example: It doesn't make sense for me to hike the Himalayas in my 60s - I should probably have that in my next 15 years or so. By the end of this exercise, you should have a clear plan of not only what you want to do before you die, but the age ranges where you can most easily do these things. The ultimate goal is to minimize regret of a life you didn't live when you could have.

Where I'm at

I haven't bucketed my activities yet - I'm still listing out activities, but this so far has been a great reminder that I can't keep delaying things I want to do. At some point, it will be too late, and the truth is, no one knows when that some point will be for them.

So, what's on the horizon for this year? I'm planning on learning some new things. Sailing seems to be at the top of the list, with tracking cars/motorcycles coming at a close second. Beyond that, I'm considering picking up a new language, and may look into aviation training. I'm not committing to all of this, and I know doing all of those would be a lot, but my plan this year is to be more intentional about the nights and weekends I have instead of letting that time get eaten up by all the websites, apps, and streaming services that sap our attention these days. More on that in a future post!