Most of you reading this weeks newsletter will probably be reading it at your place of work or employment. We spend a large portion of our lives trying to get enough money out of the money system to provide for our and our family’s financial needs often at the expense of their emotional needs.
Imagine for a second that I told you, you had 3 hours to live. What would you do? Would you finish up preparing your progress report on a particular assignment for your company? Would you finish sending that “urgent” email or possibly wait until your allocated tea time to leave? Most people I presume, perhaps naively, would rush home to their family or relatives to spend their last few hours around people they love. Even if I said that on the way home you could stop and have anything you want from any shop you could dream of, most people would forego the opportunity to have all their materialistic needs met to spend their remaining hours in true human connection. If you carry out this little thought experiment it’s amazing the clarity of thought you get when you compress time. Imagining you have 3 hours left to live brings what’s most important to us into sharp focus and we get a different perspective on our true and perceived values. As a species, humans are the only ones aware of our own mortality. This creates anxiety for our egos, as we try to come to terms with the fact that we won’t be around forever. This anxiety leads us to seek distraction externally and every time the notion of our death comes up, we disassociate from it with lies, stories or activities all in the hope of forgetting that this life is transitory.
Most religious traditions encourage the contemplation of our mortality not to provide answers for post death encounters but more for a richer, deeper life experience. This allows us to place in perspective what is really important to us. Stephen Covey’s habit number 2 is “begin with the end in mind”. I encourage you to do the same. You might be surprised at how the panorama of life can change. Chat soon
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