The moment of death feels as close as we have on this earth to *the* end.
If David Gemmell laid the groundwork for me to think about mortality and the importance of accepting it and then choosing how to live our life, Fred Kofman gave me the courage and motivation to bring it into my work.
In particular, in his book The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership, Kofman writes about the power of dying before you die, so you can truly live. He invokes zen wisdom, Braveheart, research that apparently shows CEOs who have had near death experiences are better leaders, and stories from his own work and workshops.
My description of some of those stories - along with other people’s ideas - remains my most-read ever 12-Minute Blog article. Read it here.
One of the things that came out of reading those stories and, indeed, doing the exercises he suggests my self, was a realisation that - for me - telling that story, the story of our mortality, was one of the most important things I could do in my work.
Indeed, when built out one of Kofman’s questions, ‘What if this is the last time I will be speaking to these people? (Because it might be.) How then would I be different? What would I talk about?’ I came to the conclusion that considering my own mortality made it an imperative to help others consider their own mortality.
And so inviting clients to consider what might make them sad at the end of their lives became a staple of many of my coaching engagements, and using Kofman’s Living Funeral Eulogy exercise a part of many workshops I have run since.
The belief that spending time with our own mortality has only been strengthened by more recent influences, such as Oliver Burkeman and Kathryn Mannix.
Indeed, Mannix writes in With the End in Mind about the interesting phenomena of the euphemisms we use for death and how - in her view - we should say what mean. Die. Death. Dead.
It’s interesting to think - what happens when an exercise about our funeral becomes an exercise about our 100th birthday (as has happened for me when someone takes the eulogy exercise and adapts it for a workshop they are delivering)?
Why does it matter, indeed, to talk about death? To say, dead?
A few weeks ago I wrote about how, really, there is no beginning or end, there are simply many beginnings or endings.
And yet some really matter.
Or, at least, they seem to.
The moment the baby is conceived does feel like the beginning, or at least a beginning of significance.
The moment they come down the birth canal and into the world does feel like the beginning, or at least a beginning of significance.
The moment of death feels as close as we have on this earth to the end.
Something changes in that moment.
Someone who is here is no longer here.
Even if we’re not here with them, the knowledge that they are not here anywhere is different to the knowledge that they are here somewhere.
On one of my favourite recent episodes of the Tim Ferrriss show, Roland Griffiths explained that when he asks people in his research if they believe there’s anything after death, they mostly say No. But when he asks how sure they are, they often say things like ‘95%’. And as he says, people play the lottery on far worse odds.
So perhaps it is, indeed, only an ending.
And, we have to know that that is an ending that we will all have.
I once watched Kofman on video say something like, ‘The absolute best case, really, is that you die, and you die after your parents and before your children.’
And that’s doesn’t feel like much of a consolation.
On my wall I have a ‘life calendar’. It’s based on this blog by Tim Urban, and has a square for every week of a life, from birth to 90.
Some people say ‘that’s depressing’.
Well, I’d say to them - better to know what you’ve got and live life in awareness of that, than have it sneak up on you.
Because who knows when it will come.
We don’t, mostly, get to choose the manner of our passing. (Oh look, I just did it! That is, the manner of our death.)
Or the moment.
But we can prepare.
And we can choose some things before the ending comes.
Make sure to choose.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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