“Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on Earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became.”
–Anonymous
Sometimes when I wake up, I don’t jump out of bed to start my day. Instead I grab my phone and lose myself in mindless screen time.
To be fair, I also often do things that improve me, such as reading The Daily Stoic email, or doing my Duolingo exercises.
But such is what I often do when I allow myself to get complacent and comfortable. I can dawdle the day away like no other. What can seem like an open expanse of a day with limitless possibilities can quickly become tightly constrained, as I struggle to complete my daily to-dos before I must be off to bed again.
And I wonder why I am not accomplishing as much as I want to?
I ran into the above quote last year, and it struck me as quite profound. I hadn’t thought of things in that way.
It spells out to me the end result of making poor choices on little things that don’t seem to matter so much, like deciding whether to get out of bed right away and get after life, for example.
Perhaps if I spend an extra minute or two on my phone, it won’t seem like such an imposition on my day. But those minutes add up. Then you’re talking hours, whole days, weeks.
Recently the subject of death bed confessionals came up in my mastermind group, as some were relating their overall life vision as more or less the person they expect to be when they are dying and looking back on their lives and their accomplishments.
I immediately thought about this quote and about what kind of man I want to be. I found that I was clear in three of four key areas, those of health, wealth and relationships.
These were easy for me to pick out. For health, I am to be fit and active and disciplined in my habits. For wealth, I would like to be comfortable enough to not be concerned about my finances, but not desire for so much more beyond my needs that it lead me astray. For relationships, it was to simply be of service to others, as many as possible.
The fourth area, the self, though, was a bit fuzzier. This calls for you to be much more introspective. There is a lot more variation here. Everyone wants to be healthy and wealthy. But when it comes to how you define who you are, what ideal paradigm is there for that? There is none, because who you wish to become is as varied as there are people to have the thought.
So I dug deep into this one and asked myself, “What sort of man do you want to be, Matt?”
And I decided I wanted be emotionally resilient and in control. I wanted to be able to experience boundless joy and happiness, but be strong enough to ditch pain, anger, sadness and frustration, the emotions which can only hold me back. I wanted to live outside of my comfort zone and confront my fears. I wanted to be a person others could come to for wisdom and help.
For some time now, I have had a vision statement and a definition of who I am aiming to become, but I don’t know that I made it so clear as I did after this most recent exercise.
And that Matt, he doesn’t stay in bed for a second longer than he has to. When life beckons, that Matt jumps out and starts back on the path. On that Matt’s death bed, it would be hoped that the man in the mirror closely resembles the person described in my vision statement.
Have you established your vision of your future self? If you were to die today, how close would you be to that hypothetical perfect you?
I only get one life, and I don’t want to leave it wanting. I would imagine it is much the same for everyone else.
So go get after that perfect you. As Karl Marx famously said on his own death bed, “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”
Or done enough.