Depart Without Regrets

We have a culture to live life as if to survive and to hush the idea of death, to avoid this topic of discussion as if death is only considered imaginary until it so materializes. The problem with this mentality is that many could miss out on the idea that death gives meaning to life and that it gives us the opportunity to understand what life is all about.

Death is an immortal concept that co-existed with time. It symbolizes the mortality of human beings and their finite existence. In our everyday lives, we are always confronted by the thought of mortality through the different media like the murder we hear from the news, the accidents we witness along the road, the diseases that act as a time bomb, the passing away of our loved ones – death is manifested everywhere, anywhere, at any moment in time.

If death is surprising, how can we then prepare for it? The initial question we have to ask ourselves is “What if you were to die tomorrow? What would you wish you could do before you die?” This is a safe way to think about the limitation of our lives more than it is to think about our eventual demise. Thinking about the things we wish we could do before we die is like filling out the blanks that will give purpose and meaning to our lives. In completing a goal and ticking off our list of things to do one by one, we then can pass with the idea our lives meant something, that there is some record of our existence, and we can let go of life feeling more accomplished.



Bucket List Summit last October 19-20 at the SMX Aura, was a transformative event that changed my perspective about death and how a finite life could be purposeful and meaningful despite its brevity. Life and death are just different sides of the same coin. 

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