“Death is not sad; the sad thing is that most people don’t ever really live at all.” This is one of my favorite pieces of wisdom from Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Since I first read those words I have had the good fortune of talking to a few terminally ill people. If you’ve ever spoken to someone who knows they are going to die, you get the feeling that what they have to say is important.
In my article Sometimes Bad News is Good News I related my feelings surrounding a urine test that revealed protein – an indicator of kidney failure. The test turned out to be inaccurate so my life didn’t take the turn I thought it was going to but the experience impacted me. You gain a lot of insight into your life when you think that it is going to end.
I was lucky, my test was negative. Some people don’t have that good fortune and need to accept that their life IS going to end a lot sooner than they ever imagined. Last Lecture By Dying Professor contains a video about this subject. The video that is embedded at the top of the page contains a short version of Randy Pausch’s last lecture – this page contains the entire lecture and other information about Randy.