This Is Soul Searching

In the waning moments of my life, what do I want to be true? If I do not die suddenly, and unexpectedly like my father and my others did, I know I will be taking stock of my life. What story do I want to be the real, true, story I am able to tell myself about my own life?

I want it to be true that I did not bring death, senselessly, upon myself. Whatever is left of me after death would be ashamed at my negligence if I was texting while driving, or accidentally injured myself because I was drunk. Similarly, if I died needlessly young because of poor nutrition, air & water quality, rest, stress, or apathy toward my own health, my lingering soul would be devastatingly sad. When my time comes, it will be my time, but I don’t want that time to be recklessly early. Our bones may break, but I do not want to break my own.

I want it to be true that I did right by my family, by other people, and by other living creatures. I would be so regretful if I had lived my life neglecting my family, by being untrustworthy to my friends, disrespectful to my neighbors, unkind to strangers, and insulting to life, as it came to my doorstep, in any form. How could I steal the opportunity for a good day from others? How could I take out anger on children, a dog, or other defenseless creatures? How could I pollute the water or air and bring suffering to living creatures 100 years from now? I cannot selectively value life - I’m either in, or I’m out. And I’m either honest, kind, and respectful of life or I’m not. I either did right by others, or I didn’t. Do or do not, there is no try.

I want it to be true that I used my gifts to make an impactful contribution. I think I have realized that it’s less important to do something “big” or “noteworthy”. What is it that I and few others on this earth could contribute? It takes a village to leave the village better than we found it. What’s my niche? What’s my lane? What’s the diversity of contribution I can bring to the table? Papa always told you that you were a capable person, Honor your gifts, Tambe.

I also want to be at peace with death itself. Some people call this being ready to die, or having come to terms with death. I think that means forgiving and asking for forgiveness. I think that means righting my wrong and accepting the wrongs I could not make right. I think that means having lived a life seeking out, learning from, and hopefully understanding something of the the natural beauty of this world and traveling graciously to experience the beauty of human culture. I think that means having my affairs in order medically, legally, and financially. I think that means having done the hard, spiritual work to be prepared for the unknown and undiscovered country. I think that means knowing that I’ve shared the good parts of life with the good people God has brought me to. I want to be ready. Live like there are 10,000 tomorrows, all of which that may never come.

Thinking through this has been a bit of a reckoning. Am I really living to these principles? I’m not 100% sure.

Do I really, truly, not drive distractedly? Is eating fish consistent with my perspective on respecting life in all its forms? Is working in business, or even public service, really the way to contribute my unique gifts? Have I righted the wrongs of my adolescence and been present for my extended, global family? I’m not quite sure about any of these. I think the exercise of reconciling life today with the person we are at death’s doorstep is what is meant by “soul searching.” And that’s what this is, soul searching.

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I have dedicated a significant amount of my life to understanding teams, organizations, and how they work. Understanding these sorts of human systems is one of my unique gifts. And one of the enduring truths of my study is that the way for a human to solve problems is to begin with the end in mind.

What this approach absolutely depends on is knowing what the end actually is. What is our endgame? What are we trying to achieve? What result are we trying to create? We must know this to solve a problem, especially in a team of people.

This post was inspired by a few things - a few conversations with a few members of my extended family at dinner this weekend, and finishing the book The Path to Enlightenment by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama - and it’s become a set of organizing principles of how I want to live. These four ideas: avoiding senseless death, doing right by others, contributing my unique gifts, and find peace with death itself, have been loose threads that I have been trying to weave into a narrative since the beginning of my time writing this blog in earnest, almost 15 years ago.

What I have been missing this whole time is that tricky question - what is the end? What we experience about death in our culture is truly limited. The end of life is not a funeral or a eulogy. The end of life is not what is written about us in a book or newspaper. The end of life is not our retirement party from a job or a milestone birthday in our late ages where everyone makes a speech and says nice things about us.

Those moments are not the end, but those moments are usually what we experience, either in movies, television, or our own lives. The end we have in mind when we tacitly plan out our lives is maximizing those moments. But that’s not the actual end.

At the end of life we are really mostly alone, mostly with our own thoughts. I have never seen dying up close, and I think most people don’t. I did not have grandparents who lived in this hemisphere. My father wen’t ahead so surprisingly. My surviving parents (Robyn’s folks and my mother), thank God, are not quite that old just yet. I have never truly seen the true end of life.

I think for most of my life I have been optimizing for the wrong “end”. I have been trying to design my life around having a great retirement party, or a great funeral. And that has made me put a skewed amount of emphasis on what others might think and say about me one day.

What is the better, and more honest approach is to organize life around the true end: death.

It is hard, but has been liberating. Imagining what I want to believe to be true has given me remarkable clarity on how I want to live. And that is such a gift because, thank goodness, I still have time to make adjustments. It’s not too late. And in a way, I truly believe it’s never too late, because we’re not dead yet. Even if death is only days away, or even hours perhaps, it ain’t over ‘till it’s over. We still have time to choose differently.