Do you know anyone who’s passed away before their time? In their 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s? Or even their 60s or early 70s? The average life expectancy in the United States is 78, so anyone who dies before that age is getting cheated. Do you think any of the people you know who died at a young age had unfinished business? And by business I mean leisure, fun, and adventures. Something they always wanted to do that they never got to? Would you want to know when you’re going to die? A lot of people say no because they would dread the date as it grew near. So why not set an artificial date? Just like setting deadlines, we could use that date to guide our actions. If we’re only going to be around so long (and all of us are only going to be around so long), we want to make the most of the time we have left. If we live past that time, it’s a bonus. My grandpa passed away at age 80, and he used to say that he wasn’t scared of dying because he was already 3 years over the average life expectancy. There are other ways of saying this – living on borrowed time, playing with house money.
My grandpa like the poem Thanatopsis. The last 9 lines provide an important lesson on how we all should live: So live, that when thy summons comes to join that innumerable caravan that moves to that mysterious realm where we all must take our chamber in the silent halls of death, live not like the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed, like the warrior who wraps the drapery of is couch around him and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Prince said it like this in Let’s Go Crazy: you better live now, before the grim reaper comes knocking on your door.