Unraveling the Mortality Conundrum
July 26th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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Having lived in California for most of my life, I’ve been through several earthquakes. The two strongest ones I recall were the 1989 Loma Prieta quake (7.0) and the 1994 Northridge quake (6.7).
During the Loma Prieta quake (near San Francisco) on Oct 17, 1989, I was on the top floor of an 8-story building in Berkeley. The building rolled and shook as people screamed, and shortly after the quake I could see several fires breaking out around the city. This quake damaged the Bay Bridge and flattened the Cypress Freeway in Oakland. Just below my window a busted fire hydrant sent water blasting 40-50 feet into the air.
By far the strongest quake I personally experienced was the Northridge quake on Jan 17, 1994. It killed 51 people and did an estimated $44 billion in damage. I lived only eight miles from the epicenter when it struck at 4:31am. The ground of my first-floor apartment felt like rolling ocean waves, and I was tossed around the room. Most of my furniture slid several feet from the walls, and some of my more fragile possessions, including my TV, were destroyed. Electricity and water were out for several days. Some of the balconies in my apartment building partially collapsed, and most of the shops in the area saw their windows blown out. I lived a block away from a popular shopping mall (the Topanga Plaza), and from the street I could see directly into the second and third floors of one of the department stores because the entire side wall had become a pile of rubble on the ground.
Just one month before the Northridge quake, I was living in an apartment in Northridge about a mile from the quake epicenter. My apartment building was across the street from the Cal State Northridge (CSUN) parking structure that collapsed during the quake (see photo). Fortunately, I had just graduated in Dec 1993 and moved out of that area to Woodland Hills several miles away. I lived in Northridge again from 1999-2000, and even then the campus was still recovering from quake damage — many classes were still being held in temporary buildings, and tents were used to house adminstrative staff. If I had not graduated when I did, it may have taken me a lot longer to graduate due to the disruption of school services the following semesters.
While certainly others have been through far worse, violent acts of nature can serve as a reminder that much of life resides outside of our control. Sometimes life knocks us down and tosses us around, and we must roll with the punches. It may not be fair or welcome, but it happens.
And the worst part of this lack of control is the mortality conundrum — we could die at any time in some totally random and unpredictable event through no fault of our own.
I think, therefore, that whatever plans we make for the future, we must consider the possibility that we might be forced to leave this planet sooner than expected. Regardless of the degree of conscious control we assert over our lives, that control is never absolute. The random element is omnipresent.
If I assume I’ll live into my 80s or 90s as my grandparents did, I’ll live my life differently than if I assume I’m going to die in the next 30 days. Who wouldn’t? But the truth is that I don’t really know when I’ll go. It probably won’t be for many decades, but it could very well be tomorrow.
The actor James Dean said, “Dream as if you’ll live forever, and live as if you’ll die tomorrow.” There are several popular variations on this quote, and they serve to remind us to pay attention to what we truly value. The finality of mortality endows reality with vitality.
While it can be difficult to figure out what matters most to us even when considering that we might die tomorrow, perhaps it’s easier to notice what matters least. If you knew you’d die tomorrow, what wouldn’t you do? What activities would you definitely not include in your last 24 hours? Work? TV? Email? Web surfing? What people would you not spend even a moment of your last 24 hours with?
How would you choose to experience your last day as a human being? Why not find out? Consider taking one day out of your life to have that experience now — perhaps an otherwise empty Saturday. Live that day from dawn til dusk as if it were your last. Feel every precious minute ticking by. What time would you get up? What would you eat for your last breakfast? Who would you spend time with? Where would you go? What would you do?
If you actually take a day to run this experiment to see what you come up with, perhaps you’ll notice that there are things you would do during those last 24 hours that currently have too little presence in your daily life. Can you bring some of those things into your life right now even if you don’t expect to die tomorrow? Can you cut back on some of those things that would be irrelevant in your final days?
July 26th, 2005 at 3:55 am
I always thought that this saying was flawed. There are things which I won’t do if I only had 24 more hours to live just because I don’t have enough time, not because they don’t matter to me.
So for example if I had 30 days to live, instead of 24 hours, I would take a trip to the Danube Delta, which I love. Can’t get there in 24 hours though.
And if I had 1 year to live I would probably stop working and travel around the world.
But if I had 5 years to live I would work harder 4 of them because that’s enough time to accomplish some ideas I have. Then I’d travel the last one.
And so on… I would eat a lot of sweets
in my last 24 hours, but not if I had another year to live, etc.
So I guess you can’t live every day as if it was your last one. And I am not sure you can use that criteria to determine what is important or not for you.
July 26th, 2005 at 6:20 am
@Catalin: I’m not saying to live each day as if it were your last, which is a common expression I don’t agree with either. I’m saying to consider what you might do differently in that one final day and use what you learn there to enhance your ongoing daily life.
For example, suppose you realize that on your last day, you’d spend more time outside. This might give you the idea to find ways to enjoy more outdoor activities on a regular basis.
Thinking about how you’d spend your final day (and even doing a dry-run as an experiment) can help refine how you spend your non-final days.
July 26th, 2005 at 8:28 am
> The random element is omnipresent.
Based on my personal understanding, there is no such thing as ‘luck’, ‘random’ and ‘chaos’ although things might sometimes seem that way for sure. As Steve Jobs mentioned in his commencement address at Stanfard, it is possible to connect the dots in the past. You can’t look at now or to the future and try to connect them there.
As you mentioned Steve, sometimes things that happen to us are not fair, nice or welcome, but they happen anyway. I am sure there is a good reason why they happen although I might not personally understand it all perfectly with my own limited intelligence and consicousness. Why do earthquakes happen? This has some good explanations. Why does it happen to certain people, and why do some of them have to die? That is more difficult to answer.
What I do know is to live my life in a way that will benefit others for I can not take anything with me when I die but my consciousness and the deeds I’ve done while I was alive. I try to push the envelope to the point where things I contribute to others will continute to serve them long after I am gone. If I can do that, then this will be a lifetime that was worth living…
July 26th, 2005 at 9:37 am
I agree with Catalin. For example I might go out and screw as many women as possible if I only had 24 hours left. I wouldn’t have to worry about VD or AIDS because I’d be dead in 24 hours anyway. But I wouldn’t do that in with anything more than a month to live most likely. I probably say that because I don’t actually have anyone in my life right now. I would not expect to be able to create a meaningful relationship with anyone with only 24 hours left but having any relationship even if it’s less that 24 hours is probably better than none. I can see myself talking myself out of it though since it would hurt the other person for me to die on them in 24 hours and it would not be a secret I could keep
On the other hand, while I agree the exercise does seem like it should help me figure out what’s not important I have no idea what really is. Email doesn’t seem important but given living 7000 to 10000 miles away from my family maybe e-mail or blog entry would be best to say goodbye.
I guess I can say I really don’t like this exercise because I can’t answer the question. Sure if I had a family I’d want to spend time with them. My wife, my kids but I don’t so there really is nothing I can’t think of doing special if I only had 24 hours to live and that’s just depressing. Maybe I would try to connect with someone on that last day either for real or like above but I suspect I wouldn’t have any more luck than I’m having now. Maybe my inhibitions would be less. Maybe I would be less choosy about who I picked, knowing there is no future I wouldn’t care that there was no long term outlook on these women. hmm, maybe that first part is useful to my everyday life. No inhibitions means more chances so that’s probably a good insight from this exercise. I’m not sure the second one is though.
July 26th, 2005 at 10:05 am
I once took a flight from Chicago to Ohio to visit my girlfriend. I couldn’t explain the dread I had about getting on that plane. The day before the flight, I remember thinking about how it might be my last day alive.
I was a bit more conscious about what I was doing that day. While I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, I did notice that I was being more aware of what I did with my possible “last hours”. I prayed a bit more than I had before as well.
Obviously, I survived the flight, although I’ll say that the landing was a bit unstable with the strong crosswinds…man was that scary! For some time afterwards, I was feeling really good about life in general. I still made a good effort to make the best use of my time. I also try to be more conscious of things that I would say or do differently if I only had 24 hours left.
Naturally, I can’t just drop everything one day to travel or something like that, but I know that one day in my life is equal to my whole life. As Steve Chandler says, it’s mathematical. If I live each day the way I want to live my life, then I must live my life the way I live my days. Whether I die tomorrow or when I’m 130, if I live each day the best way I can, then I will necessarily live my life the best way I can.
It has been some time since I took that flight, and I find that the feeling I had around that time isn’t with me anymore. It’s good to be reminded of things like how you live your life. Recently I found myself tired and was about to lie down to watch television. Then I realized that it would be a terrible way to waste my time and decided to read a book instead. Maybe it was because I knew I had a goal of reading a book a week and just wanted to chip away at it, but the point is that I still try not to abuse the time I have in life.
July 26th, 2005 at 10:15 am
@Gregg: Sounds to me like you answered the question just fine. You identified something you’d try to include in your last 24 hours that isn’t part of your daily life right now. Now it’s up to you to decide if you’d like to go on living day after day without that element or whether you want to take control and make it a part of your daily life.
If it isn’t part of your present, it isn’t part of your future.
July 26th, 2005 at 10:45 am
I have seen a survey about what people would do if this is the last day you live on the planet. And most of the people responded that they would spend their time with their families and loved ones. It’s not surprising, isn’t it? But how do we treat our love ones on a daily basis? We got mad at our spouses all the time… We ignore our parents… We are too busy to take our kids to the games or movies…
I really like Steve’s suggestion to take a day off from the daily stress and live like it’s my last day. What would I do? Go to see my mama and papa; and make some donations
July 26th, 2005 at 11:27 am
I believe this exercise is very valuable.
My personal goal is to be in constant conversation with God asking what would be most pleasing to him throughout the day. This helps with the friction between wondering if I were going to live only one more day or forty more years.
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“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” – James 4.13-15
July 26th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
The interesting thing is that no matter how you decide you would live that last day, when you try to translate that back to a normal life, living that way EVERY DAY would leave you with an unbalanced life. For example, I would spend the day loving my teenage daughter, going over some funny pictures of her when she was young, laughing some with her, crying some with her. Yet living this way every day would be unbalanced. I realize YOU are not saying to live this way every day. What this exercise REALLY is is an exercise in values clarification. You cant live that way EVERY day, but it makes you prioritize your values–shows you what’s most important. In my case, that’s my daughter.
August 12th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
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