We All Have to Change

We all have to change. We all have to conduct this experiment upon ourselves. What sort of human being do we want to be? +Srinivas Rao has just inspired me to write more in this vein as he reminded me of something I wrote in my own book Flight of the Tropicbird, something which was one of the main underlying philosophies of that tome. At the beginning of the book I have a quote that goes like this:

"The philosophy that you apply to your death is the philosophy that you must apply to your death."

Towards the end of the book I elucidate this statement further:

Imagine being on your deathbed. You are lucid and you have one minute to live. What's important now? Is it important that you made millions of dollars? Is it important that you worked for thirty years for a corporation that gave you a gold watch when you left? Is it important that you sacrificed your youth for a career that paid you very well and yet reduced you to ill health due to stress and worry? Is it important that you have a nice, new luxury car sitting in your garage at home? No, these things are not important at all. Because if you are on your death bed, with one minute to live there's only one thing you will ask yourself: 'Who did I love in my life and who loves me?' At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, when you are about to breathe your last breath, the only thing that matters is love. All the material things in your life count for nought. You are not going to take them with you. You will, however, take love with you and leave love behind. The people you loved will think about you, they will laugh about the things you said and did, they will remember you and they will cry about the fact that you're not here anymore. You cannot give a greater gift that that at the end of your life. And so, this is the thing that has me perplexed. Why, when we all know that we are going to die, do we spend our whole lives ignoring this? Why don't we think about that last minute and apply that thinking to our whole lives? I just know that whatever is wrong with this world, it will be a whole lot better if everyone did that.