Why You Need to Contemplate Your Mortality Every Day
Contemplating my mortality makes me a better person
Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash
An 85% chance of being dead in 5 years. That’s what the doctors told my parents when my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer.
He didn’t make it five years.
He wouldn’t get to see me graduate. He wouldn’t be able to see his daughters get married. He wouldn’t see the people his family became without him.
The scary part of death is that it immediately impacts your sense of mortality. It reminds you of that uncomfortable truth that you will die. It’s scary. Nobody knows what happens after you die.
You come up with theories that give you peace because otherwise, you’d be in one endless panic attack.
Death puts one thing in perspective: you.
The Last Day
Imagine you’ve been told you have 24 hours left to live. What would you do?
First, you’ll be sad. Maybe a bit shocked. You might wonder what it is that finally does you in. Then, you’ll be faced with reality.
You have an allotted time left alive. How are you going to spend it? Everyone’s going to react differently. Some people may crawl under a rock and wait for an early grave, but not you. You have so many dreams. You want to make an impact. You’re not ready to go.
When you put life in perspective, it shifts your attitude. You go from living passively to actively living. You become more deliberate. You live with intent.
You realize everything there is you want to accomplish. The places you haven’t seen, the things you haven’t gotten to do. Consider all that life has to offer that you haven’t done yet or won’t get to do again if you die.
You would miss things like:
Seeing the sky
Playing with your pet
Getting a good night’s rest
Hearing your best friend laugh
The next season of your favorite show
Laughing so hard your stomach might burst
Driving down the highway blasting your favorite song
That dish you’ve been dying to try at that new restaurant
Death should be the ultimate motivator. Your impending mortality should spark a fire in you to go out and get what’s yours. Make something of your own that you’re proud of.
Living on Purpose
Many people harp about the importance of meaning in your life. Have some bigger purpose that drives your life forward. That’s the key to happiness and success.
All you have to do is define what that is. People act as if this is easy, but to you, it’s a heavy feat to accomplish. Having a purpose sounds more like a burden.
But when you have a purpose, life does get better.
Death does this funny thing to you. It makes you think about yourself in the grander scheme of things. What’s your place, your purpose — what impact will you leave on the world?
Everybody wants to matter. Nobody wants to be forgotten. You want to know your existence served a purpose. Otherwise, what the hell was the point of it all? Why be alive if it isn’t for a reason?
The Native Indians had a revolutionary idea — what if your purpose on Earth was to just be? To be here and experience your life fully.
You don’t need a higher purpose. You are your purpose. Being here is your purpose.
The Danger Zone
For a while, I was sick. I was in a near-constant state of an anxiety attack. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, bracing me to run. Everything in my core told me to run. Fight-or-flight was constantly in the wings, ready to take me down.
It was a horrendous time to be alive. I was convinced I wouldn’t make it out of it alive. I thought this was the end. But I made it through it.
Surviving that tragedy changed everything I knew about life.
Before, I didn’t want to be alive. I prayed for death to come for me. But after…
After, I realized just how much I wanted to be alive. Something funny happens when you come close to death — you realize how badly you want to live.
Death is scary and unknown. You think you want to die; then you realize you’re afraid of what it means not to be alive.
Living is all you’ve ever known. Between all the good and bad, you’ve been there in the thick of it. Your heart beats with life. Your lungs pump oxygen through your veins. In the worst of times, your body has kept you going.
Your emotions may overpower you at some points, and that’s when you feel the most alive. Imagine if all that went away and everything became nothing. There wouldn’t even be darkness. Darkness would mean there’s still something there, but nothing? That’s terrifying.
Begin Again
It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Life is a gift.
The odds of you being born are less than one in four hundred trillion. Try and grasp that concept. You are a miracle. You wake up daily, going about life, never thinking about it.
Stop. You feel that? You feel your lungs breathing in and out? Your body goes about functioning every day with no help from yourself. Your body is desperate to live. It keeps surviving, despite everything you’ve put it through.
Despite every bad thing you’ve gone through, your body fights. Every. Second. Every. Breath. You are alive, dammit.
Start living.
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Maggie Kelly is a freelance writer who writes about mental health, self-help, and psychology. Contact at maggiepkelly@gmail.com
