Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn’t indulge himself with attempts at the impossible, he doesn’t waste time complaining about how he’d like things to be.
They figure out what they need to do and do it, fitting in as much as possible before the clock expires. They figure out how, when that moment strikes, to say, Of course, I would have liked to last a little longer, but I made a lot of out what I was already given so this works too.
There’s no question about it: Death is the most universal of our obstacles. It’s the one we can do the least about. At the very best, we can hope to delay it–and even then, we’ll still succumb eventually.
But that is not to say it is not without value to us while we are alive. In the shadow of death, prioritization is easier. As are graciousness and appreciation and principles. Everything falls in its proper place and perspective. Why would you do the wrong thing? Why feel fear? Why let yourself and others down? Life will be over soon enough; death chides us that we may as well do life right.
We can learn to adjust and come to terms with death–this final and most humbling fact of life–and find relief in the understanding that there is nothing else nearly as hard left.
And so, if even our own mortality can have some benefit, how dare you say that you can’t derive value from each and every other kind of obstacle you encounter?
* Source: The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday