Read This At My Funeral.

Meditating On Mortality To Life More Fully Today.

What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? Yes, you don’t know when it will be, and by extension, you don’t know who will be around to speak. For these reasons, many people think this is a useless exercise.

Furthermore, most people avoid thinking about their mortality at all costs. It would be too morbid or sad to think about their funeral, let alone their death. So they just avoid the thought altogether.  

However, many of history's most successful, influential, and thoughtful people have used this question to guide their life. I first heard of this exercise from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. The second habit Covey presents is “Beginning with the end in mind.” He opens the chapter with this exercise of imagining you are at your funeral.

He asked you to imagine three different people speaking at your funeral. One member of your family, one close friend, and one person from your work or community. What would these different people have to say about who you were, how you treated them, and what kind of life you had?  

I have found it to be one of the most important questions I can ask to prioritize and direct my life. To examine what my core values are. I do this through two frames.

1. I imagine that I died today. What would these key people in my life have to say about me? This helps me to reflect on how well I have lived up to this point in my life. When I am brutally honest with myself this can be a very difficult exercise and often lead me to make important changes in my day-to-day life.

2. I imagine I die at the age of 79 years old (this is the average life expectancy in the USA). In this mental exercise, I can visualize the kind of life I want to lead over the next 36 years. How I want to show up for the people in my life. And what I want my time on this earth to stand for.   

  As I often write, meditating on your mortality can be one of the most life-affirming exercises we can do. Remembering we don’t know how much time we have in this life emphasizes the preciousness of the time we do have. The preciousness of this very moment. 

The Stoics spoke about the importance of remembering that they will die and the shortness of life. Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, say, and think.” 

While we will never actually get to hear what others say about us at our own funerals, we can write our own speeches before we die. This is called an auto-obituary. In the same way that many people take care of their living trust, or last-will-and-testament while they are alive, some choose to write an auto-obituary while they are still alive.

This can be an incredibly powerful and emotional exercise. Personally, I have found it to be essential. Most of the regular readers of this newsletter know that the biggest catalyst and driving force for this writing project is my desire to leave something valuable for my daughters to read. 

Whether I am alive or not, it put my mind at ease to know I have these writings to point them to. Every night I lay down to sleep, I have the peace of mind to know that there are 80 plus articles of over 100,000 words here on Substack that will outlive me. Like a very long auto-obituary, one can mine for possible wisdom and strategies for living a good life.  

For those that don’t have the time or willingness to read for 10-plus hours, I wanted to conclude today’s article with a concise passage summarizing what I would like to read at my funeral. My auto-obituary. It will inevitably change and shift with time if I am so fortunate to have another few decades to live. But here today this is what I humbly have to say.  

Conclusion. Read This At My Funeral:

I meditated on my death every day. I didn’t dwell on, or anticipate it anxiously. But I did reflect on the indisputable fact that it would come, and I didn’t know when that would be. 

The point of remembering that I will die wasn’t to feel sad or morbid but to remember how temporary and precious this I am given is. I often ask myself, “ In light of the fact that I will die, is this latest anxiety really that important? Is it worth the worry I am giving it? Is this really how I want to spend my time?”

Beyond bringing a broader perspective and recontextualizing my situation, mediating my mortality helped me to cut out the wasteful activity: Worrying about what other people think about me, trying to make others happy at my own expense, or worrying about things outside of my control.

When I look at my life from this perspective it helps to clarify what is truly important and simplify what I should be focused on. The greatest things in my life which have brought me the most joy are my daughters, good friendships, good conversations, engaging in meaningful work (such as writing this), being of service, and appreciating the beauty, awe, and wonder of conscious awareness in this very moment.

From this point of view, I tried to live a life that maximized these experiences and my appreciation of them. This doesn’t mean that everything else was a waste of time or a means to an end, but I always tried to frame activity in its proper place. 

 This moment is not a means to an end, this moment is your life. How you feel about this moment is how you feel about your life. Happiness, peace, and presence is not an accident. It is a choice, and skill, you can prioritize and improve. But you have to decide to do this. Then embrace the daily habit of seeing the good in life. 

If you have good health, your family and loved one’s are in good health, you have good relationships, and you live in a relatively free and safe society that is not a war zone or experiencing starvation, you have to learn to deeply appreciate these gifts. Imagine if any of these were taken away, what you would give to have them back. Appreciate and honor the miracles in your life. 

If you are reading this, and I was an important person in your life, I understand your sadness and grief. Feel it fully try not to turn away from the pain but face it as best you can. Death, sadness, and grief are some of life's best teachers, if we can have the courage to embrace them. 

But please, don’t let the sad turn to nihilism or cynicism. This life is too precious, important, and meaningful to be taken by these thieves. Know that suffering is an unavoidable and essential part of life. Again, suffering is a great teacher. Take the lesson and alchemize it into something beautiful and true. 

As for me personally, don’t waste a minute worrying about me after I die. Those that have passed are the only ones not worth worrying about. Their work and time on this plane of existence is done.

I don’t know where we go, what we become, or merge into, after death. But I have a strong faith that it is not anything worth worrying about. Don’t let anxiety about death rob your ability to live fully now. This is the only death we should look to avoid, a premature death that comes from fear of death. This robs us of our ability to live fully while we are still here.

As Epictetus said, “I cannot escape death, but I can escape the fear of it.” Or Marcus Aurelius, “It is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live.”   

If anything resembling the form of consciousness which is writing these words survives the death of the body, it will be cherishing this moment and expressing it as fully as possible, wherever it is. Please do your best to do the same, where you stand. 

I believe Ram Dass says it best when describing death and dying, “We are all just walking each other home.” This home is not something to fear, but welcome and embrace.