What dies with you.
According to data from the company Statista, just 11 percent of us consider death in our daily lives. Most of us are clearly busy with the subject of life, how we live it, and who we spend it with. But when we are presented with death, whether it be in the family, a friend, or even a long-lost acquaintance, it stops us in our tracks. We are re-acquainted with the fact that we will not be here forever, and no one escapes death.
Sir Ken Robinson once said, “What you do for yourself dies with you, what you do for others lives on forever.” Sir Ken is the most-watched speaker in TED talk history, with his 2006 talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" being viewed online over 60 million times. He died in August 2020 from cancer. If you look up who he was, he clearly lived out this mantra. I would also encourage you to read his manifesto Imagine If.
I think for most, there comes a point where you realize that there is no higher calling than doing for others. Some realize this early, some later, and some never do. I think the older you get the more apparent this becomes. I would attribute this in part to the fact that you are faced with your mortality more and more the older you get. The material things in life lose their luster when you realize you won’t be around forever. While I waiver at times, I personally know where I am going when my time is up. I am nowhere near perfect, but I do my best to live my life for the Lord and a big part of that is doing for others.
When this topic comes up, people usually live their lives in one of three ways.
1. They don’t care what dies with them. In their mind, after they are gone, it doesn’t matter anyway.
2. They say they care about doing for others, but it is surface-level. If given the choice or opportunity, they don’t follow through.
3. While not perfect, they do their best every day to do for others.
If there was an unbiased survey done, I would say a majority of people fall into the second group, but out of these three, who do you think is the most at peace with death? The first group says they are happy, but know there is something significant missing from their lives. The second group knows they could do better, but actively choose not to and feel the pains of regret. The third group is nowhere near perfect, but they try, and know that is enough at the end of the day. It doesn’t need to be said, but we all know, deep down that the third group is more at peace than anyone else.
The great thing about the journey of life is people change, constantly. Sometimes that change is good and sometimes that change is bad. You might be someone who lived life for yourself and had a change of heart. Or you might be someone that strived to do for others, and now you are going the selfish route. Here is the thing about change. It rarely happens just because. It almost always happens because you were influenced by someone else. That influence can be good, and it can be bad.