Death as a personal compass

My wife feels I think too much about death. She doesn't like to think about it at all.

To be clear, I don't brood about death and dying. I'm generally cheerful and optimistic; I enjoy life while at the same time I recognize that death is inevitable and one of the foundations around which human life is constructed. Woody Allen said that he wasn't afraid of death, he just didn't want to be there when it happened.

I believe that thinking about death is an invaluable way to sort out your values and priorities. The idea of coming to the end of my life full of regrets and lost opportunities should be more frightening than death itself, because it would mean that I had wasted my chances and made the wrong choices. So I look at my awareness of inevitable death as a sort of lodestone, a standard against which I hold up the choices I make and the values I uphold, to help me see what my priorities truly are and should be.

Looking back on what has been important to me is another way of trying not to get trapped in the minutiae of everyday life. Will it have been more important to me to have never missed a day of work or to have gone with my children to the zoo or the movies? Which will I remember during my last moments? Getting the trash out to the curb or talking on the phone to my best friend? Mowing the lawn or reading an interesting book?

I don't mean that we shouldn't take care of the little responsibilities and tasks. We have to get the lawn mowed and the trash out. But we need to be careful not to let such tasks take over our lives. The knowledge of the shortness of time ahead of us can help us keep our priorities straight and remember what is truly important to us. Death makes us realize what is important and what isn't, and for that I'm grateful.