We are all going to die.

I’ll give you any odds you want on anyone reading this being alive in 100 years time.

We all know it, even if at times we don’t want to believe it. A dear friend and coaching mentor of mine stood on stage at an event I was at last year and told us “We’re all going to die, and we don’t know when.”

This is perhaps our ONLY truth.

With this knowing there are many things in life that we simply allow not to affect us in any way. We’ll ‘be gone long before then’ or we ‘have more important things to worry about’

Yet so often we lose sight of that perspective. We are going to die.
February the 10th this year will be my 17,000 day alive, according to a nice little app on my phone. Wow, where did they all go? Well, I can tell you that a whole bunch of them went on being concerned about things that even at day 17,000, let alone my last day, will be of no concern to me whatsoever!

A few times I’ve been asked ‘if this were your last day what would you do’ or a variation of that question, such as ‘if you only had one year to live what would you do?’ The last time that latter question was asked I simply considered, well, I’d probably spend more time hanging out and having a good few beers with my mates. Oh, gosh, what does that mean? That I don’t want my life to mean anything? That I don’t want to leave some kind of legacy? Well, Maybe…

I’m okay with dying. I was talking to my mother just this weekend about this. Seriously, if I go now, tonight or next weekend, I’m pretty much okay with it. Sure, there are things I would love to do, but there will always be, and I am at peace with my own mortality. I’d feel for those close to me (if I could), I know I am important to a few people’s lives, but for me personally, I’m okay with my mortality.

Another mentor of mine, Michael Neill, talked about this once, can you be okay with today being a good day to die? Yes… I think I can. I think I am. I am at peace with it. It no longer has to be of concern to me. I am free of the fear.

And whilst I’m here…

I see it all the time. All over Facebook, all over my friends and family’s faces, all over their lives. An obsession with life as if it is all that there is. Sure, I get it, we (maybe) just have this one life and we’re a long time dead. But I also get that if there are molecularly minuscule details about life that are not ‘going my way’ I am not going to contaminate this magically brief momentary visit to this realm with beating shit that things are not how I imagined or want them to be.

I choose to live and embrace every moment. I might not enjoy all moments, I’m magnificently human in that I might not even enjoy complete phases of the journey that might feel like an indestructible, era defining feat of apocalyptic architecture of my life, but I also know I’ll be gone soon enough, and way before then, so also will be this very moment.

THIS moment.

Gone.

Left behind will be (Gods will winning over the arrogance of man) a beautiful planet of natural, blissful harmony in which my own ashes and memories may still be a part.

Whatever I think is a big deal, in all likelihood isn’t. It just feels that way when I am blinded by my own illusion of my own life. There is so much more to life than me, than my own often pathetic details, than my own thoughts.

Yes, that’s it. There is more to this existence, this being, this relentless alive and beautiful universe than my own transient, momentary and immeasurably small thoughts about my own brief life. And when I allow myself a glimpse of that, when I see that I am not even a conceivable part of the blue dot, I’m at peace, I feel the bliss of insignificance that allows me a playful exploration of the possible, and indeed seemingly impossible, within my own illusionary world.

And I allow my own miracles to unfold.

I allow myself to just be me.