Are You Living to Die or Dying to Live?

CHAPTER 1
AN EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY

When Harding University freshman Ty Osman was involved in a multiple car crash, he jumped out of his vehicle to see if his friends in another car were injured. He had no idea that a third car would come along, strike him, and take his life that night. When the parents of twenty elementary school children sent their kids to class on an ordinary day, they were oblivious of the fact they would never see their children alive again because of the impending evil awaiting them. When I went into the hospital last year with blood clots, I learned that I have stage 4 melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. I was told there is a 75 percent chance that I will die within five years.
Most of us do not believe we are going to die; we are the fortunate ones whom destiny has smiled upon. It’s always the other person—but not me. No one will ever read my obituary or refer back to when I was living. So we live out our days lost in the incessant flow of automatic thinking and the assumption that we’ll get to enjoy our daily pleasures while everyone else is passing away.
This day is one day closer to our last day; it is a lifetime in a capsule. If we would heighten our awareness that our death is imminent, we would live with more of a sense of urgency and depth. We would waste less time responding to the trillions of bits of information constantly bombarding us that block our capacity to create a lasting legacy. We would examine our lives, instead of reacting to everything going on around us. In his best-selling book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle asks, “Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures . . . can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism . . . that condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality?”1
We live at a fascinating time in history, but the secret of life consists of learning to better understand ourselves and others, rather than being spectators who watch the unfolding daily barrage of information that speeds toward us like missiles. We are on an extraordinary journey—a journey we could not imagine in our wildest dreams—but deep inside we know that the journey is not permanent, and if we don’t leave an imprint, no one may ever know we were here.
What will our legacy be? What masterpiece will we leave with the world? A song, a poem, a book, a great thought, or kind deeds? What do we want to accomplish before we depart? What will we pass on to the present and future generations?
Each day we awaken to another opportunity: this day is everything. We have the chance to make an impact again, but we must be careful not to relive our past over and over, for suddenly one day the journey will end.
The challenge is to create a legacy, something people will know and remember about us. This frame of mind will bring great meaning and purpose and help us rise above the mundaneness of everyday existence.
It takes confidence, determination, and insight to create a lasting legacy. Achieving a legacy is more than positive thinking, realizing our value, acquiring material wealth, conquering our shortcomings, or reacting to daily happenings. It is examining ourselves to see whether we are following the best path for our families and being honest enough to realize that serving others is the answer to the mystery. It’s the effort we exert when troubles knock us down or we let ourselves down. It is thinking noble thoughts, lifting others up, reflecting on what our human experience means, and creating a reality that transcends the ordinary.
Some of us think we are doing fairly well; there is nothing more we can do for ourselves, our families, and others. We say, “Let the good times roll,” because we are politically correct, prosperous, and know all the answers. Yet the good times do not always roll, because we don’t know all the answers, we take our wealth for granted, and we definitely are not going to be here forever.
Others drift along with the daily flow of currents, like rafts lost on the ocean, rather than being high-octane vessels that actively navigate the storms of life. We may enjoy our daily amusements but spend little time thinking about what it all means. We miss many opportunities to improve ourselves because we don’t look beyond the present routine of daily living.
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Josh: Dad and I wrote this book to encourage all of us to use every day to its fullest by developing insights about ourselves and not cruising along, thinking that we have it all figured out. How many times do we slow down and take an honest look at how we have lived? And if we do, will we like what we see or wonder what we have been doing with our lives? When I think how suddenly death took hold of my friend Ty and the Sandy Hook children, I realize this is a real issue I need to face in myself before it is too late.
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How well do we know ourselves, our families and friends? Are we lifting up the people around us and trying to develop a better understanding of people we don’t know?
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Josh: Today could be our last day. We must use that mentality to find fulfillment in the way we live. After all, every day is an adventure, and we should treat it that way.
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Our aim is to explore life and death from the point of view of two generations. I am sixty-three years old, and my son, Josh, is twenty-two. Josh and I have observed that when we share our perceptions of what it means to be alive, we both become more aware and are able to live with more depth and intensity.
All of us have the potential to create positive legacies. It begins when we realize that the greatest rewards do not always go to the lucky, the young, the strong, the attractive, the talented, and the wealthy, but to those who truly believe in themselves enough to develop the confidence to help make the journey more exciting and fulfilling for everyone. Existence does not just happen; everything is connected in more ways than we realize. When we overcome our automatic thinking, habits, and attitudes, we can turn ordinary moments into extraordinary moments.
It is no secret that most people live mediocre lives. Mark Twain wrote, “Men are born . . . and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure.”2 Why? Because many people think that fate determines their actions and future events; therefore, they are not motivated to reach for higher levels of self-satisfaction or to test the waters to see if other choices are possible. They feel that destiny has placed them in their position and who they are now is all they will ever be—lucky or unlucky, attractive or average-looking, smart or typical, rich or poor, talented or boring, and everything in between—and they spend their entire lives acting out of distorted views of themselves.