A GOOD DEATH
What does a “good death” mean? I raised the practice of praying for a good death in a blog on what we can learn from Honi. Let me be more specific here.
I don’t think it is the same as an easy death. Sure, I pray that I go down to take a nap and never wake up at a point when I am ready to die. Who could possibly want all the pain of a prolonged death when you are old or the premature death of too many people. But an easy death is not the same as a good death.
I think of a good death as having at least three elements.
I have lived out my unique life purpose
I have embraced the certainty that I, like all living beings, will die.
I have lived my life such that my death creates opportunities for people I care about to grow and develop.
We each have a unique life purpose, a reason that we are born in the place and time we are born. This is a core belief of mine that I obviously can’t prove. Most of us don’t manage to live out our unique life purpose because our “consumer conformist” culture, as Bill Plotkin calls it, absolutely has a great stake in our never discovering this purpose. Because to the extent that we truly know why we are here, all of the consumption we are pushed to do fades in importance before the priority of our purpose.
Living out our unique life purpose means both that we discover it, and then we figure out how to live it through and make a difference. Neither the discovery nor the implementation are easy; give yourself credit if you’ve done any work in this realm. We all know plenty of people who haven’t.
I have embraced the certainty that I, like all living beings will die. “Embrace” is different than mere acceptance. As we get older, most of us on some level accept the inevitable that we will die. But embracing it is different. It’s not the same as praying for an easy death with all my marbles intact. Now, I can get completely behind this desire, and these words do sometimes come out of my mouth in my prayers. Embracing death means cultivating an attitude of gratefulness for the cycle of birth and death, because there is no life without death. That doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry to die (I’m not). It does mean that the cycle of birth and death is what makes this beautiful, miraculous world possible.
My death creates opportunities for others. I pray every day “May others benefit from my death as I have benefitted from the death of others.” A good death that embraces death is conscious that we are part of a long chain of human beings and part of what we are here to do it nurture future generations, just as our ancestors created the possibility of us being here. An engaged life of living our purpose means that when we die, there will be places that need to be filled—and part of our job is to prepare our successors to step into these places.
I took this responsibility very seriously when I decided to mostly retire from the business I co-own and had managed or co-managed for the past 30 years. I made sure that my successor was set up to succeed and that the organization as a whole could see my retirement as an opportunity to grow and develop. This was a good death to my involvement with the company. Contrast that with CEOs who return to run their company after they have retired (Disney is the most recent big example as I write this). That is not a successful death.
So if you would die a good death, take care to
v Know and live your unique purpose
v Embrace your death
v Create opportunities for others and do what you can to make sure they succeed.
This is the way of a good death.
