It’s dinner-time.
You’re shoving a delicious piece of chicken into your mouth when your younger brother starts talking about the enormous dog shit him and his friends saw on the way home.
“It was bigger than a head…” he reports.
Before he can go any further, your mum snaps at him: “Jake! Not while we’re eating.” She shakes her head. Where did I go wrong with that kid?
Jake shuts up.
Now, I’ll be honest – I’m on your mum’s side.
I don’t want to hear about a dog shit bigger than a head whilst I’m trying to enjoy the dinner she slaved over. Call me old-fashioned.
But there is something else we do this about. All the time. Where we try to stamp out all mention of it and deny its existence in the hope that we can make it go away…
Death.
We don’t like talking about death. We don’t like thinking about death. We treat death like the proverbial dog shit bigger than a head at the dinnertable.
And paradoxically, all we are doing is we robbing ourselves of life.
One day – and there’s no knowing when – will be your last. It could be today. I hope it’s not. I hope you have many, many more days. But one thing I do know – you don’t have an infinite amount left.
So use them. Use them on stuff that matters.
Just like night gives meaning to day, and darkness gives meaning to light, let your death give meaning to your life. Let it focus you like a laser. Let it cut away the noise, the waste, the inertia…
When you were born, Mother Nature gave you a time-limit. And it was the most generous thing she ever did. She could have given you forever, but she knew better than that. Make her proud.