Now that we’ve looked back to draw strength from our best moments, let’s look forward ... and talk about something that’s on all of our minds as we grow older (even if we usually try to avoid thinking about it).
Our desire to make a difference — the abiding search for meaning — grows with each passing decade, hand-in-hand with matters of the spirit and with our awareness that one day our physical presence on this Earth will come to an end.
After all, our lives may be longer, but they are still finite.
And we are faced with the question Ernest Becker so eloquently posed in The Denial of Death:
“The only worthwhile preoccupation of man: What is one’s true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation? What does a person dedicate him or herself to beyond the purely personal?”
Our quest for that life-giving force is the most honest and brave way of facing our own mortality.
That may feel a bit heavy ... not to mention a pretty tall order. Little wonder so many of us back away (and all of us back away at times).
But as Steve Jobs put it so poignantly when he spoke to the 2005 graduating class at Stanford University ...
“Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. ... There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Once we acknowledge both the prospect of our own death and the promise that life holds, we gain our greatest power: We can use our lives to say something important, however small or large we may think it is.
Our actions, our contributions, or just showing up in our own way, can send a message that means something to others, and even to ourselves.
If we make that choice for life, our civilization may not only be rescued from the worst of fates, we may be opened into the best of fates, beyond our imagination of today.
And along the way, you and I will come to know that we counted for something. That we mattered. That we were indeed alive.