
“Eat, Drink & Be Merry for tomorrow we die” is a famous idiom from the Bible, quoted by many to express a carefree life. Though people seem to take the first half portion of the idiom seriously, they tend to ignore the second half. In yet another verse of the same book, the writer tells us that, “A wise person thinks a lot about death”. Death could be the last thing that we would want to think about in our life and hence most of the time death catches up with us unexpectedly. I thought over that phrase and found it truly to be a wise thing to do.
The first benefit that comes to my mind is adequate time for planning. If we have a long term solo trip in our schedule and we have to leave our family behind, we start planning and preparing well in advance. We schedule automated payments for our bills, we would arrange for someone to take care of our family, house and belongings, put everything in order and so on. Don’t we do all this to ensure that life for our loved ones continues unhindered in our absence? Thinking about death helps us plan backwards in our life. The second benefit is that it will help us make the best out of every single day and moment of our life. Steve Jobs in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address quoted the following
The first benefit that comes to my mind is adequate time for planning. If we have a long term solo trip in our schedule and we have to leave our family behind, we start planning and preparing well in advance. We schedule automated payments for our bills, we would arrange for someone to take care of our family, house and belongings, put everything in order and so on. Don’t we do all this to ensure that life for our loved ones continues unhindered in our absence? Thinking about death helps us plan backwards in our life. The second benefit is that it will help us make the best out of every single day and moment of our life. Steve Jobs in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address quoted the following