Death and achievement

You’ll be forgotten. Everyone is. Even the greatest actors in history are largely forgotten. Does this diminish a life?

Absolutely not.

Perhaps, however if your perspective is that this life was for achievement, for success, for gain, then an apparent ending will always appear to have cut that short. If the system you’re in seeks to always sell you more, then the cutting of that moment means that there still was more that you didn’t acquire/gain/achieve. It’s a simple point.

And yet we’re repeatedly told that the deathbed regrets of the dying is how they wish they’d spent less time accumulating and more time being. How difficult that is to internalise when the end seems so distant.

But how dangerous it is not to live like life is for being not doing. That much is outside your control. And that accumulation is ultimately deeply transient.

Perhaps then a recasting of the relationship to accumulation and achievement. Perhaps a greater focus on what the internal voice is demanding. To be heard. To be felt.

And not drowned out by the endless screams of more.

As if this moment was anything but complete.