6 Months To Live

Memento mori and living your last days

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I wrote this while listening to this song. Play as you read for maximum emotional resonance—no seriously, play it, this is an experiment and there’s nothing to lose.

Steve Jobs once said:

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important...You’re already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

The Universe is 13 billion years old, if you live to be 100 years old, your entire life would still just be the blink of a firefly.

That tiny spark of light is all you exist for.

What would you do if you had only six months left to live?

Or maybe a better question is what would you stop doing?

This is the story behind the film Ikiru by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

It follows Mr. Watanabe, an old civil servant who discovers he has terminal cancer and will be dead in 6 months.

On hearing the news Watanabe doesn’t know what to do, his entire life has revolved around his pencil-pushing desk job.

And now faced with his impending death, Watanabe realizes that not only has he not been living all these years but he’s also forgotten how to live—or more precisely, what it means to live.

Mr. Watanabe might be fictional but his story is very real. Eventually, all of us will face our end. One day we’ll wake up for the very last time.

Life is precious.

Not just from a hippy, “life is beautiful” point of view. But even from a purely reductionistic scientific worldview. Life is precious.

NASA

Life seems bountiful only because we’ve been spoiled with a biosphere filled with it. But the vast majority of the universe is an inanimate, cold, lightless, barren vacuum.

Yet we take life’s finiteness for granted.

Like Mr. Watanabe, we’re so busy being busy, that we forget the point of life is to live. Not to be busy.

This tradition of putting death in the forefront is exemplified in the Latin phrase “Memento Mori”, Latin for “Remember that you will die”.

During Roman victories, as the crowd cheered the conquering General, an aide stood behind the General and his job was to whisper into his ears “Memento Mori“—“Remember that you will die.“

Not someone you’d like to invite to a party.

Daily Stoic

But the Romans thought this practice was important to prevent their victors from being consumed by excessive pride.

Remembering our mortality causes us to pause, to reflect on our actions, and live more deliberately, especially at the height of our success when we seem invincible.

But contemplating your mortality also adds a certain beauty to life.

Like Mr. Watanabe, Terence McKenna (who I’ve written about) was also diagnosed with a terminal illness.

He had this to say about his impending death:

“I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing.

Its certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you’re going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf.

I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.”

Kandis

Contemplating your mortality compresses life—all the joy and sorrow. In that space, only what's important stands out—and you find that it’s mostly joy.

That life is a gift experienced only by the most fortunate of molecular combinations.

In the film Ikiru, Mr. Watanabe discovers his job and pension mean nothing to him. He’s accomplished nothing significant and his son, who will be the only real proof that he existed, hates him because he devoted his life to work.

I was about 7 years old when I first realized that everyone I knew was going to die. That one day everyone would turn off, like a computer, and never come back on.

It terrified me.

Even as adults we ignore our mortality. We soften the blow with religious concepts of an afterlife or like Mr. Watanabe we distract ourselves with busyness or entertainment.

To drown out the question of what we’re actually doing with our life.

In Ikiru, Mr. Watanabe, after spending some of his savings on entertainment is fed up as he still feels the emptiness in his soul.

He vows to do something meaningful with the remainder of his life by helping build a park in a neglected neighborhood. To accomplish this task his entire personality changes from weak and unassuming to fierce and determined.

Mr. Watanabe in the face of his imperfection and mortality becomes more than he thought he could be.

For the first time in a long time, he truly lives.

Mazerone

As a teenager, I realized that if the final destination of all of us was death. Then the only proper way forward is courageous advancement into the future.

To live intentionally.

Not to live the life your parents or society enforce on you…but to truly live for you. Knowing that everyone dies alone.

So many people worry about physical death forgetting that there is such a thing as soul death. To die on the inside.

I wrote this today because I have also contemplated this question.

What would I do if I only had 6 months to live?

I’ve given this much thought and besides a few minor adjustments (visiting family and friends more). I’d continue to do everything I’m doing now…maybe with a bit more intensity ; )

But largely everything I currently do is something I’d do even if I had 6 months to live.

I’d definitely keep writing these articles.

Because I love writing them and I'm honored and grateful to share this moment of my life with you.

Thank you very much for reading. Know that you have contributed to my happiness.

And if I may do the same, two questions:

If you only had 6 months left to live.

How would you live differently?

Why not live like that now?

Take care of yourself friend.

Until next time ✌.

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P.S.

• The firefly quote was gotten from Naval in this interview.

• The Steve Jobs quote was gotten from this speech.

• This Rick and Morty segment on life as a video game is worth the watch.

• I also like this video on life as a video game.

• R.I.P. Akira Kurosawa, Steve Jobs, and Terence Mckenna. They showed that to truly live is to contribute to something much greater than yourself.