How to Live Forever
If you’re unhappy with your life, or if the idea of dying makes you feel uncomfortable, this is your warning.
What you’re about to read is not for the faint of heart.
But perhaps those are the people who need to hear this the most.
You are going to die.
And no one will remember you.
Sure, maybe the next generation will. And maybe even the generation after that. But eventually, no one is going to remember your silly little life.
Your face, your job, your interests, your memory - all will fade into oblivion.
Most people are afraid of death.
They don’t want to believe that they have an expiration date.
Life seems everlasting.
Death is a distant event.
So far away it doesn’t even seem real.
Death is nothing but real.
Life is ephemeral. It is fleeting. Brief.
Here one day. Gone the next.
We like to think that our lives are so important, but we will all inevitably be forgotten.
The only people who’s lives we’ve remembered over multiple generations are authors, artists, world leaders, and historical figures. I’m sure a couple names come to mind.
Still, there are people who’ve lived wonderfully amazing lives and who’ve had massive influence on the world whose names we’ve never heard of.
Their stories are told in books and displayed in pieces of art that have been collecting dust throughout the annals of history for thousands of centuries. Lives that once held so much importance, so much relevance, that someone cared to document them for future generations to marvel at their brilliance.
Yet it’s almost as if they’ve never lived at all.
Their lives have been lost to time, itself.
In this day and age, the memory of our lives will most likely live on longer than any generation that has come before us.
Because the Internet.
But even with the internet, there will be a point in time where the memory of your life will be lost within depths of the humanity.
Just like the old books on the old shelves that no one has touched in who knows how many years, your online persona will be like a single droplet of water in the vast ocean that is the internet.
Even if your documentation is impeccable and your influence is widespread, there will come a time when no one remembers who you ever were.
At all.
The light that is your memory will grow dim.
You are a teeny tiny thread in the grand scheme of the universe.
It can be frightening to accept how small we actually are.
But it is true.
To some, death is depressing.
To me, death is the most inspiring thing there is.
The closer your relationship is with your own mortality, the more freedom you will have in this life.
I have lost people close to me.
I have seen people I know lose someone close to them.
Illness, heart-attack, murder, stroke, suicide.
There are many ways to die. And all of us will, some day.
Tomorrow, you could get hit by bus. Or wake up feeling a pain in your side that turns out to be a terminal disease.
No one is above death.
There hasn’t been a person in history who has evaded it.
It doesn’t matter how resilient you are or how well you take care of yourself.
It is inevitable.
I’ve seen the strongest person I’ve ever known try their absolute hardest to overcome death.
And even they couldn’t escape it.
Seeing someone you love try to claw their way free of death’s grip will make you question everything.
Some of us are lucky to spend the dying hours with them.
Some are not.
A loved one can be taken from you at any second.
Everything’s fine. And then.
All of sudden.
Gone.
Quality of Death
We think we have more time than do.
But death often finds us sooner than we think.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about death, it’s this:
quality of life determines quality of death
We here about quality of life so much, but rarely do we speak about quality of death.
By this I mean, what’s going through your mind right before you die? Are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Do you have regrets?
I don’t want to be on my death bed, or worse, taken abruptly, without doing all of the things I’ve always wanted to do that I haven’t done yet.
I want to feel like I’ve given everything I could possibly give to this life.
I’ve written about this before. Here: The Power of Writing and here: 2.24.24 - Contentsation
I first heard of this idea of “quality of death” when reading a short story in Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, called “Kaleidoscope,” where a group of astronauts are ejected from their spacecraft and slowly start drifting away from each other with no means to get back to Earth safely.
Their death is quickly approaching as the oxygen in their air tanks depletes. All they have left is each other, communicating through their radios. As they slowly float further and further towards their impending death, they reflect on their lives.
One of them, named Lespere, has led a life full of hatred, although he hadn’t realized it until he knew he was about to die. As he’s plummeting through space back towards Earth, picking up speed with each second that passes, he begins to get hit by a series of asteroids traveling at incredible speed that take off his limbs one by one. What a terrible death. But what’s worse is how he felt about his life.
Hanging on by a thread, Lespere has a moment of clarity:
“Is there anything I can do now to make up for a terrible and empty life? If only I could do one good thing to make up for the meanness I collected all these years and didn’t even know was in me! But there’s no one here but myself, and how can you do good all alone? You can’t…”
“I’ll burn, he thought, and and be scattered in ashes all over the continental lands. I’ll be put to use. Just a little bit, but ashes are ashes and they’ll add to the land.
“He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.”
Sure enough, his wish was answered.
The scene pans back to Earth:
“The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed, ‘Look, Mom, look! A falling star!’ ‘Make a wish,’ said his mother, ‘Make a wish.’” ¹
Death breeds new life.
Getting comfortable with your own death will lead to rebirth.
If you’ve ever lost someone close to you, you’ve probably seen your relationship with death change.
I know I have.
I’ve stared death in the eyes.
The eyes of my own mother.
She fought her hardest, but it came to a point where there was nothing she could do.
Seeing her in her final days was the most difficult experience of my life.
I knew she was gone. I could see it her face.
She knew she was gone.
Cancer. 56 years old.
Too soon.
March 8, 2018. The day before my 22nd birthday.
It’s been almost 6 years now.
I think about her every day, but even more this time of year.
You grow up thinking your parents will live until 100. Or at least until you have your own kids.
Few are lucky enough to make it that far.
I don’t know if there are things she regretted doing, or not doing, but I imagine there were, as there are for most.
Even with this newfound perspective on life and death, I imagine I will probably have some regrets, too. Like most.
But I’m going to try my best to make that list is as small as possible.
I urge you…
Get comfortable with death.
It will force you to appreciate the little things in life like you never have before.
If life was forever, we wouldn’t cherish it.
There is true beauty in death. It makes life worth living.
Do the thing.
I’m sure there’s something that you’ve always wanted to do, but still haven’t done yet.
Why?
You’re afraid.
You’re afraid of what people will think.
You’re afraid you’re not good enough.
You’re afraid you will fail.
Life is too short to live in fear.
Fear is death.
When you choose to not do something because you’re afraid, you have already died.
You’re saying to yourself, “You know what, I’m okay dying with this regret.”
Stop waiting until tomorrow. Or the next day.
Have some respect for yourself and just do it already.
Whatever the thing is, the first step probably isn’t even as hard you think it is.
You’re making it out to be this huge thing, when in reality, you could take one step forward today if you just put the fear behind you.
Take action.
If you don’t, you’re always going to think, “What if I had…”
Don’t let that be you.
Do the thing.
That Power
You will not live forever.
But your impact will.
The impact you have on others is a never-ending chain.
Think about everything that had to happen in order to put your life in motion.
Think about all of the actions that your ancestors had to take for you to be born.
Your existence is a miracle.
What about all of the actions you’ve taken in your own life to be sitting here reading these words at this very moment.
Not to mention all of the events of my own life that have inspired me to write this for you to read.
Life is truly amazing.
The opportunity to help each other is one of the greatest gifts we have.
Each action you take will have an effect on someone else. And each action they take will affect another.
Your actions compound exponentially. (remember the pebble in a pond?)
We often lose sight of the power we have to change the world around us.
It can be scary to hold such power. Because there’s so much uncertainty.
And for that reason we often choose to ignore it.
This quote from the film, Coach Carter, captures this fear more perfectly than I ever could:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were all meant to shine as children do.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others. ²
You must not be afraid of the power you possess.
You can change your life at any instant.
Are you tired of your current life? Feeling lost? Want to change things up?
You have the power to do so.
Today.
What are you waiting for?
You’re the only one who can do it.
You’re not going to be here forever.
Life and death are not as far apart from each other as we think.
In fact, you’ve been dying since the day you were born.
“Funny the day you born, that's really your death sentence” - Childish Gambino ³
That doesn’t give you an excuse to just mail it in and sit around doing nothing all day.
Sure if you want to do that, no one is going to stop you. But you will undoubtedly regret it.
The way I see it, you have two choices in life, the easy way out or the hard way.
You can fill your life with vices in the pursuit of pure hedonism.
Seeking pleasure through self-indulgence.
There are two endings to the easy path.
It will either lead death straight to your doorstep or it make you realize that you’re meant for more.
You know what you want to do, but you’re telling yourself: “i’m too busy,” “i don’t feel like it rn,” “nah, not today.”
I’ve been there, too. Still am some days.
The idea of reaching your true potential is scary because you know it will be hard.
You will be tested. You will have days where life punches you in the throat. You will fail.
By taking a leap of faith, by trusting yourself and finally seeing what you’re truly capable of, you’ll never wonder what could have been. What you could have accomplished. Who you could have become.
It is the path less traveled.
But you must follow it.
A Fulfilled Death
I’ve thought a lot about how to make the most of this life.
How can I ensure the quality of my death is of the highest degree? That I am fulfilled. That I am happy with the life I’ve lived.
How can I live so that when that day comes I can say to myself, “I’m ready. I’ve done all that I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve lived a good life.”..?
The truth is I can’t ensure anything. It’s not guaranteed. I have to accept that or I’ll be disappointed.
I can’t focus on the end goal, I have to focus on the journey itself.
I keep thinking back to the moments where I’ve felt the most fulfilled in my journey so far to see if there was anything true across all of them.
What I’ve concluded is that there is something that is always there in those moments of true joy and happiness.
The one thing they share, is love.
There is nothing in this world that will give you more fulfillment.
Whether it’s laughing with friends or going through the tough times with your family.
The foundation for living a life that will last forever is love.
It is only thing in this world that can transcend time and space.
It’s been 6 years since my mom left this Earth.
I cannot see her, I cannot talk to her. My time with her is gone. She does not exist in this space anymore.
But I still feel the presence of her love each and every day.
It is something that will never leave me. Until the day I die. And onto whatever comes next.
My soul is marked with her love.
Imprinted on my soul forever.
Love is infinite.
Your Legacy
You hold so much power.
Use your life to spread love and positivity to others.
This may mean giving someone a compliment or a big, warm hug.
It could also mean having a difficult conversation with someone close to you.
It can even be something as simple giving someone a friendly smile when you pass them on the street.
The smallest act of love can result in something so much greater than you could ever imagine.
Love is exponential.
Act with love each day and you will start to see the world differently. You’ll start to live your life in a way that inspires yourself and those around you to be the best they can be and to enjoy this life to the fullest.
Do this, and you won’t have to worry about dying a regretful death.
You’ll have lived a life full of love.
A life worth living.
A life that lives on in those who you’ve touched.
A life that is forever.
I’ll leave you with this quote I saw a while ago that I often come back to when I’m feeling lost or that my life is unimportant:
“Remember — the Universe gave up celestial pieces of itself to craft you. So much had to conspire in order for you to be here. So be here. Be here, and be exactly who you want to be. Create the art you want to create. Speak your heart into existence. Bloom where you are planted. Dig and dig and dig into the core of your passion, and hold on to whatever ignites something inside of you, hold onto whatever stirs your soul. Get to know yourself, and own it; never apologize for the way your heart beats against your chest. Never apologize for taking up space. Just be here. Just be here and remember — you were bred from the crashing, and folding of the Universe into itself. Life may be messy, but you were born from a chaos that existed between stars. The same energy flows through you. Turn it into art. Turn it into strength. Turn it into beauty, like it turned itself into you.” - Bianca Sparacino ⁴
-Ryan Ward
PS: Call your mom and tell her you love her.
If you liked this, you may like: 2 People Lucky to be Alive (an addendum to what you just read)
PSS: This track list is all over the place, but I think you’ll find something in each that will help this piece resonate. Enjoy :)
Footnotes
¹ The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury. Page 39.
² Coach Carter. Directed by Thomas Carter. 2005. Paramount Pictures. Based on a true story, in which Richmond High School’s (Richmond, California, USA) head basketball coach Ken Carter made headlines in 1999 for benching his undefeated team due to poor academic results. The quote above is recited by the character Timo Cruz. The original quote (which was slightly altered for the film) is by Marianne Williamson, from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (Harper Collins, 1992; from Chapter 7, Section 3):
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
³ III. Life: The Biggest Troll [Andrew Auernheimer]. Because the Internet. 2013. Childish Gambino.
⁴ A Gentle Reminder by Bianca Sparacino
