Today is May 1 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “Is your forthcoming death transforming your life?”
Americans are working longer days with less vacation and starting their retirement later. In today's chaotic global marketplace Americans are working longer hours than at any time since statistics have been kept and are now working longer than anyone else in the industrialized world.
In 1999, more than 25 million Americans - 20.5 percent of the total workforce - reported that they worked at least 49 hours a week, and 11 million of those said they worked more than 59 hours a week. When asked to describe their plans for retirement, 27 percent of Americans said they will “keep working as long as possible,” a 2015 Federal Reserve study found.
Another 12 percent said they don’t plan to retire at all. But we pay a price for working so many hours. The question you have to ask yourself then is: 'are you aware of the price you are paying?' Eugene O'Kelly only realized the price he was paying for the many hours he was working once diagnosed with an inoperable brain cancer.
At the time of his diagnosis Eugene O’Kelly, a 53-year-old chief executive of the accounting firm KPMG, wrote Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.
O’Kelly died on September 10, 2005, but in the months leading up to his passing, he discovered the world around him and connected with nature, time, and loved ones as never before.
In short, death increased his self-awareness on an entirely new level. During his final months, he would sometimes invite a friend or acquaintance to take a stroll in the park.
Such a stroll, according to O’Kelly “was sometimes not only the final time we would take such a leisurely walk together, but also the first time.”
American journalist Normal Counsins noted “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.”
Eugene O’Kelly recognized what was dying within him while he was alive and transformed his life. Further support as to how mortality can transform one's life comes from the field of social psychology that has provided a theory of human motivation toward achievement known as terror management theory (TMT).
Anthropologist Ernest Becker’s 1973 publication The Denial of Death helped launch the field of TMT. Since the publication of his book, researchers have conducted over 200 experiments investigating TMT.
Becker received a Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction work two months after his death from cancer at the age of 49.
TMT proposes a basic psychological conflict that results from having a desire to live but realizing that death is inevitable.
According to Becker: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.”
New studies conducted by researchers at the University of Missouri concluded that maintaining an awareness of life’s end may increase one’s positive outlook.
Contemplating death doesn’t necessarily lead to morose despondency, fear, aggression, or other negative behaviors, as previous research has suggested.
Additionally, an awareness of mortality can motivate people to enhance their physical health and prioritize growth-oriented goals; live up to positive standards and beliefs; build supportive relationships and encourage the development of peaceful, charitable communities; and foster open-minded and growth-oriented behaviors.
While death awareness can, at times, generate negative outcomes, it can also function to move people along more positive trajectories and contribute to the good life.
In his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs reflected on the value of thinking about death and echoed similar sentiment when he said “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Death is the destination we all share and your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
How often do you find yourself living someone else’s life?