Lest I Forget

Memento Mori: Everyone you know is going to die People who are close to me would die before me, and I’d regret not being nicer to them. Everything else is insignificant in comparison.

The ones you feel for the most, your parents, would probably be the first. Your elder relatives will go. Your childhood friends will go. Your college mates, your ex-es, your crushes. All will go.

Realizing the people we love will be gone someday puts a much higher value on the time we spend with them.A few years ago I spoke with Frank Ostaseski from the Zen Hospice project. I asked him about one of my greatest fears that one or both of my parents wouldn’t be around to see me fall in love, get married, and have kids. It’s hard not to think about when you’re 40, and these things haven’t happened. But rather than tell me how to deal with the fear, he said I should spend time with my aging parents now, not only after some significant milestone had occurred. It’s not like we’re the Brady Bunch. My sister moved far away for medical school and was gone for the better part of the last decade. After years of living at home, I’m sure my parents were as tired of me as I was of them. Sometimes I”m messy which drives my mom crazy. And other times I make decisions that don’t make any sense to my dad. Despite our differences, the doors always open and food is always on the table. So after my 40th birthday, I decided to start going home for dinner every Sunday.
- What freaked you out today?
- Father Time
- hardest part of adulting is watching your parents grow old
- When your father dies, these words come to mind
- A cab ride I’ll never forget
- What is it like to lose your mother?
- Dreams about parents long after they are gone
- Today is My Wife’s First Birthday Since She Died
- Everyone you know will die
- Who by very slow decay. At the end of life the majority of interactions will be nonverbal as the body shuts down and the person lacks the physical strength, and often even the lung capacity, for long utterances. “People will whisper, and they’ll be brief, single words—that’s all they have energy for. Medications limit communication. So does dry mouth and lack of dentures. Many people die in such silence, particularly if they have advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s that robbed them of language years earlier. For those who do speak, it seems their vernacular is often banal. From a doctor I heard that people often say, “Oh fuck, oh fuck.” Often it’s the names of wives, husbands, children. “A nurse from the hospice told me that the last words of dying men often resembled each other,” wrote Hajo Schumacher in a September essay in Der Spiegel. “Almost everyone is calling for ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’ with the last breath.” Delirium nvolves a loss of consciousness, the inability to find words, restlessness, and a withdrawal from social interaction. Delirium strikes people of all ages after surgery and is also common at the end of life, a frequent sign of dehydration and over-sedation. “it may even be regarded as exceptional for patients to remain mentally clear throughout the final stages of malignant illness.” “I certainly was somewhat tired after the operation and everything … and I did not know where I was. I thought it became like misty, in some way… the outlines were sort of fuzzy.
You will grow old. Then very old. In between, you would get sick. Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have.
Life is tragic. You can’t have everything; make the most of what life throws at you.
- Live a life of no regrets. There can be regret with anything you do. You had to make a choice, you did, and that’s for the best. Close doors and accept change. It’s part of life. Embrace it. When you are young, you have all the possibilities of what to do with your life. But as you progress with your life you have to make decisions about what do you want to do, and as you walk through some doors you close most other doors. For example by choosing to become a software dev, you most certainly wont become a doctor, lawyer, cook, house builder or truck driver, although all these options were open to you a couple of years back, now those doors are mostly closed. The Road Not Taken is about the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives. The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything. What we’ve seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean. Take joy in your life now, what you learn now, and your significance to those around.
- Marginal progress is the only kind of progress there is. If you have a grand ambition, start with small actionable questions
You are breathing. You don’t know how many days you have left in your life. Live today and rejoice in its wonder.
Don’t wait to take the risks ‘til some perfect time. No perfect time is coming, and the clock IS ticking. Take the f—ing risks. Be utterly foolish. Be embarrassed by the bigness of your dreams, but not stopped by that embarrassment. Blush if you must, but don’t ever be held back by “what other people might say.” To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting. Ask for what you need. People would let you do anything if you are confident enough (e.g. painting cars with google logo and placing cones in the middle of the street, or putting ‘don’t lock this door tonight’ by burglars)
- What is something you learned very late in life, but wish you knew much earlier?
- What would you do if you hit the lottery? How can you do some of that right now?
- Take more risks, especially when you’re early on in your career; being young and unknown is actually a major advantage because you have very little to lose.
- You are growing old. There’s no time to be anxious. Go out and tell the truth. Just be. Communicate how you feel. Think of yourself less (not of yourself less). Remove the “I”. Just perceive. Life is grand and you are an explorer! Play! And Delight! 
- “I am nostalgic for my twenties (most of them, anyway; twenty and twenty-one were squandered at college; twenty-four was kind of a wash, too) but I can tell you for sure that they weren’t as great as I now crack them up to be. I was always broke, I was often lonely, and I had some really terrible clothes. But my life was shiny and unblemished. Everything was ahead of me. I walked around with an abiding feeling that, at any given time, anything could go in any direction. And it was often true.” - Meghan Baum
- Don’t let fear of failing stop you from taking risks. That is a risk itself, because you will miss out by not acting. If you do fail or end up in a crisis, you’ll probably be OK. The more crises I’ve faced in my life, the less scary each subsequent one has become. I’m secure in the knowledge I’ve made it through disaster before and I believe I will again. If you do something new and ambitious, be ready for doomsayers. Doing new things is hard both because you have to figure out how to do it and you have to deal with a constant barrage of negativity.
- Simple tip – don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. If you’re doing something ambitious, you’ll be told “no”, a lot. Sometimes though, people will give you what you want. Those times will outweigh the pains of being rejected, so be aggressive.
- Don’t be afraid of failure
- Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
- Things I wish I knew before my chronic illness
- Regrets of the Dying
- Paul Graham’s to do list
- You are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy?
Find what makes you happy and do more of that. Live abundantly. Live playfully. Life is not a journey; life is a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance whilst the music was being played. Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive? Stop setting goals
Tell the Truth. Quell anger. Even if its apt. Instead, be like Inuits..

“If I only had three words of advice, they would be, Tell the Truth. If got three more words, I’d add, all the time…Time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think.” - Randy Pausch
- It is to lose sight of the “truth”, and how it precipitates the gradual erosion of character which is hard to detect.
- Scene from Judgement at Nuremberg
- What screams I’m insecure in my relationship?
- Lying creates a separation from what you know and what the other does: it makes you lonely and disconnected. The more you hide to make yourself likeable, the more unlikable you become. It’s a paradox
You are wrong about almost everything. And that’s okay. Everyone else is, too. Why facts don’t change our mind
Live with zen and minimalism; live simply.
- Hacker news poster experience
- Drop computers
- Stop hoarding information and embrace the uncertainty of experiences
- Zen Habbits
- 43 Folders
Find your tribe, be vulnerable, be competent and know it, have crucial conversations, and frame everything positively. Don’t try to make bad relationships work. Don’t worry about other people. Don’t dwell on your mistakes and shortcomings. Treat people as if they are in a sensitive and malleable emotional state all the time. You have the power to uplift friends and strangers with every interaction, large or small.
Go look at the stars and meditate on the nature of the universe. Before its too late.
How to love? Pay attention. Love is the same as attention. Lady Bird Attention and the Moral Life

Commencement Addresses

28 March 2019

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Lest I Forget