Should you think about death?

The mortality question

Philosophers think a fair bit about death.

Martin Heidegger

"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself."

Jean-Paul Sartre

"Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal."

Socrates

"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils."

Epicurus

"Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not."

Seneca

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested."

Marcus Aurelius

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

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After a charming week in Delhi, I learned that someone I cared about had passed away in the middle of the night, minutes after I boarded my flight to Beirut. My mind immediately raced back to the last time I saw him. He was warm and kind, as he had always been.

Ever since he lost his mother, life was never quite the same. Perhaps part of his mind was elsewhere, having a chat with her.

He was intelligent and considerate but couldn’t check all the rigid boxes of what is considered “success” in India. His career took off late. He didn’t marry, although I learned that he had found someone a few months before he passed.

I am sad that he is no more but what upsets me is that he had to spend most of his life paying an emotional tax for not being as successful as society expected, making less practical choices, and being a dreamer.

When people who dream big achieve their vision, they are hailed as icons. When they falter, they often get a cruel combo of pity, patronizing suggestions, and quiet mockery. Their social networks dwindle and they are left largely alone to deal with life.

The more time I spend building Network Capital, the more I realize that people, in addition to needing a support system to succeed, need a community to tinker, experiment, and fail safely with. The difference between people who get what they aim for and those who don’t is often miniscule.

Those who miss are often treated differently…This person I discussed today was treated differently by most until his sudden death. Now that he is no more, the world seems kinder. I wonder if this kindness could have been advanced or “preponed” as we call it in India.

So should you think about death? I think so. To reorient how you live and what you live for.