What if death wasn’t certain?

Friends,

I was driving the other day when a thought hit me.

Death feels unpredictable, doesn’t it? We have no idea when it’ll come.

But it’s also the most predictable thing there is—it’s the only thing we know for sure is coming.

But here’s the thing—it’s not just certain that we’ll die. We even have a rough window for it, right? Most of us can expect to go somewhere between 70 and 100 years old, and almost no one makes it past 110.

But what if that wasn’t the rule anymore?

Imagine this: a new treatment for longevity. You’d have to take it by 25, but here’s the kicker—it only works for half of us, and we can’t even tell who it’s working for.

This kind of life? It would be tough—devastating, even.

I can’t imagine not knowing whether I’d have to live without Robyn for 100 years. Just thinking about it—it’d tear me apart.

And what about my kids? Their kids? Would I end up burying generations of my own family because I lived to 500?

Then there’s friendships. Would they cross generations too? Or would we all start isolating, afraid to get close to people when we had no idea how long they’d be around?

Money—would we work forever? Could we even retire?

And politics? Would having immortals who cared about the extreme long-term make things better? Or would culture fall apart because the thread of shared experience stretched too thin?

I don’t have the answers. This idea—this uncertainty about how long we might live—it’s unsettling in ways I didn’t expect.

But what about you? How does this land for you? What would it mean to live in a world where death was no longer the one certainty we had?

With love from Detroit,

Neil

Becoming giving beings

Children are selfish. By design. That’s what they’re supposed to do and their survival depends on it. From the moment they are born, they demand that we feed them, clothe them, protect them, love them, and bathe them.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @adroman

And so did I. Like every other person that has ever lived, I was a selfish child. Far into adolescence, I was selfish, even if it was slightly less so than the day I was born.

As we age, it seems as if life extracts the selfishness, little by little, from our bodies and minds. First through marriage, then through children. For those of us who believe, through faith also. Through the intensities of grief and joy the selfishness is stolen sneakily, by the experience of life itself - if we let it.

If I am lucky enough to live a full life, without sudden death, I don’t know, exactly, what it will be like to die. I know it’s coming someday, but say I am dying at 95 from the ailment of a having a body that has long since depreciated past its useful life - what will it be like? I meditate on what it might be so that I can be prepared.

If I am so lucky to not die a sudden death, I think it may actually be like the movies. That’s what I hope for, anyway.

When I meditate on what I will be thinking and feeling on my deathbed, I imagine being close to Robyn and our children. I think I will want to just sit with them, drinking water and eating rice with lentils. Simple food, that does not distract from the company.

As I visualize myself slowly chewing the tasteless rice, my deathbed meditation progress to its very last moments.

I am there. Robyn is there. Our sons are there, and even in my foggy mental state, and despite the excruciating pain of inhabiting a dying body, I can tell our sons are grown because the hair on their temples has started to grey - that is the mark of a grown man in our line.

And then, at the very end, I gaze at Robyn. I am there, trying to muster some last words before I go ahead. In that last moment I do not ask for more painkillers. I do not cry. I do not beg God for more time. I do not say to her, “tell me you love me.” In those last moments, I am determined not to take.

With the last breaths of oxygen I breathe, and the last beats of my heart, before my thoughts go dark, I will try to say, “I love you.”

I will try to give love, to her, until the literal end of my life. Until God takes me from her embrace. In that moment, when I am as vulnerable as the day I was born, I dream of giving whatever love remains. Just like that. Just like the movies.

In life, and death, there can be so much suffering. That’s part of the deal. But what a beautiful thing to be part of. It is wonderful to know that if we must suffer the fate of death that there’s at least a fighting chance that life will have transformed us from something selfish into something more gracious.

It is utterly remarkable to me that we can go from being newborns, designed to be selfish, into giving beings. What a beautiful and curious thing it is, that after the immense suffering of our lives, at the moment of imminent death, our singular focus, above even our own survival, can become, “I love you.”

Being that, a giving being, is what I hope to become.

Death is glue

There are so many issues and problems that we need our politics to alleviate. Everything from the economy, to health, to environment, to violence. So how do we organize it all, what do we do first?

To me, the most profound and impactful thing that will happen to any of us is death. Death is one of, or perhaps the only thing, we all truly have in common. We all grapple with it. We will all face it. Death is non-discriminatory in that way. Death binds us together. Death is glue.

If death is glue, I’ve wondered what a political framework that acknowledges and is informed by the profundity of death would be. To me, three principles emerge that could help our politics sharpen its focus on what matters most.

The first organizing principle is to prevent senseless death. A senseless death is one that does not have to happen, given what is and is not in our control as a species, right now. Death is inevitable and basically nobody wants to die, so let’s prevent (or at least delay) the deaths we can. So that means we should focus on these data, figure out which causes of death are truly senseless, and address all the underlying determinants of them.

Before we do anything else, lets prevent senseless death - whether it’s from war, from preventable disease, from gun violence, or something else.

The next principle is to prevent a senseless life. What is a senseless life? That’s a difficult, multi-faceted question. But I think the Gallup Global Emotions report has data that are onto something. They ask questions about positive or negative experiences and create an index from the answers - surveying on elements like whether someone is well rested, feels respected, or feels sadness. What we could do is understand the data, geography by geography, to understand why different populations feel like life is worth (or not worth) living. Then, we solve for the underlying determinants.

There are so many reasons that someone may feel a senseless life, these challenges are probably best understood locally or through the lens of different types of “citizen segments” like “young parents”, “the elderly”, “small business owners”, or “rural and agriculturally-focused”.

What’s great about these types of problems which vary from person to person, is that tools from the private-sector marketing discipline - like customer segmentation, consumer insights, consumer experience - are extremely well developed and equipped to make progress on understanding these “senseless life” challenges which affect different populations differently.

The last organizing principle for a politics informed by death is protecting our freedom to prepare for death. Death is so tremendously profound and difficult, we all try to prepare for it differently.

For some, we turn to our faith to cope. For others, we turn to science, philosophy, or self-expression. For others, still, we turn to a life of service. Many of us build our lives around a devotion to family, and that devotion and connection is what helps us prepare for death.

What we have in common, though, is that we all try to prepare for death in some way or another.

I don’t claim to know the single best way to prepare for death, which is why ensure sufficient freedom to allow everyone the choice in how they prepare for death is so important.

To be sure, there are problems with this political framework. Most obviously, controversial issues remain controversial. Take the death penalty for example. Is abolishing the death penalty an act of preventing senseless death or is it an act of enforcing the freedom to prepare for death? These sorts of tensions still remain.

Moroever, envisioning a politics centered around the idea that death is the most profound and binding experience there is, would require a citizenry that accepts death. It would take a culture that is courageous enough to talk about death. It would take all of us doing the hard work of trying to imagine how to minimize regrets on our own deathbed, when we are weakest and most vulnerable. That’s no walk in the park, especially in America where we sometimes seem allergic to talking about death, even slightly.

And yet, I think the adhesion death provides is still so compelling. Death give us some chance of finding common ground on society-level challenges. I want, so badly, to not die from preventable causes. I want, so badly, to live a worthy life rather than a senseless life. And finally, I want, so badly, to prepare for death so its cloud of fear and uncertainty is lined with at least some sense of peace and acceptance. Our shared interest in death and life gives even political adversaries some place of agreement to start a dialogue from.

And even outside of politics in the formal sense, I feel like I owe it to others to act in a way which is mindful of death and our shared struggles with it. As in, I feel like I owe it to you and my neighbor to help you avoid a senseless death. I feel like I owe it to you and my neighbor to avoid a senseless life. I feel like I owe it to you and my neighbor to give you the freedom and to help you prepare for death.

I think I owe it to you to be generous, compassionate, honest, kind and respectful to you to some reasonable degree, because we are all facing death. This shared mortality binds us and obligates something of me to you, whether it’s in the political realm or just in our day to day lives.

A politics that acknowledges and is informed by the profundity of death could be too confusing and volatile to even consider as a teneable framework for political thinking, let alone an electoral strategy. But it could nudge our politics and culture to be more honest, courageous, and compassionate.

Because death is glue.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @claybanks

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.

—-

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.

“Papa? Will you never die?”

“Papa? If you take good care of your body, will you never die?”

This was the last tension, that once revealed, unwound the bedtime tantrums a few nights ago. As it turns out, it wasn’t the imminent end of our annual extended family vacation in northern Michigan that had Bo’s feelings and stomach in knots.

It was death.

Unasked and unanswered questions about death. Doubts about death. Anxiety about death, so insidious that I have not a single clue how the questions were seeded in his mind and why they sprouted so soon.

“I want to be with you for a hundred million infinity years, Papa. A hundred million INFINITY.”

Such earnest, piercing, and deeply empathetic honesty is the fingerprint of our eldest son’s soul.

When he tells me this, my excuses all evaporate. How could I ever not eat right from this day forward? How could I ever get to drunkenness ever again? How can I not be disciplined about, exercise, sleep, and going to the doctor? How could I ever contemplate texting and driving, ever again? How could I let myself stress about something as artificial as a career? For Bo, for Robyn, and our two younger sons, how could I do anything else?

I needed to hear this, this week, because I have been losing focus on what really matters.

I have been moping about how I feel like many of my dreams are fading. My need to return to public service. My need to challenge the power structures that tax my talent everyday at work. The book I need to finish, or the businesses I need to start. Ego stuff.

In my head, at his bedside, my better angels turned the tide in the ongoing battle with my ambition. Those are not needs. Those are wants. To believe they are needs is a delusion. Dreams are important, yes, but they are wants, not needs.

All I really need, desperately, is to be here. To show up. To wake up with sound-enough mind and body. To not lose anyone before the next sunset. To have who and what I am intertwined with to stay intertwined. This is what I need.

What I vowed to Bo is that I would take care of my body, because I wanted to be here for a long, long, long, long, long, long time.

“I will be here for as long as I can. I want to be here, with you and our family, for as long as I can.”

And as he drifted to sleep, I stayed a moment, kneeling, and thought - loudly enough, only, perhaps, for his soul to overhear,

“Please, God, help us all be here for as long as we can.”

Walk beyond me

Myles,

8 days ago, my boy, you took your first steps. It was a Saturday. Your mother and I were in the family room with you on the floor and we were playing with Hot Wheels or magnets I think while your brother napped.

And you were up, holding onto your mother. And then you reached out to me, with your mouth-open smile, balanced, and took four steps toward me.

And we were so proud and happy for you. You are growing, and you are starting to cleave away from us, already, and take your own path in life.

But I want you to know, Myles, that those steps are not for me. You do not need to take steps - literally or figuratively - to please me. I am your father, but your life is not for my pleasure.

And you are our second child, as you know. And as it happens, your brother took his first steps in almost exactly the same place, in our family room. And you, son, need not follow in his footsteps, either. You are your own person, with your own gifts. We already see this. You and your brother are best friends, even now and I am overcome with a deep joy that you will be able to walk together in life. But you are each your own. You are each one of a kind.

It was a very sweet memory for your mother and I to have, to see you and hold you as you took your first steps. But this letter to you, also, is not for my pleasure. I want you to remember, yes, that your steps are not for me and nor do you have to follow the footsteps of your brother. But equally, I write this so you can remember that your steps are not fully yours alone either.

I hope you realize that the steps you take, matter. I hope you realize that you have the capability to carry others forward as you walk. I hope you choose to walk toward goodness and with righteousness with every step you take. I hope you walk with conviction and take steps in a direction that push our community and the human race forward. And I hope you relish the journey of love, honor, and service that is symbolized by the taking of a long walk.

But more than anything, Myles (and I mean this for your older brother too) that one day, you will walk past me. And you must walk past me. It is difficult for me to even acknowledge that one day I will not be able to walk with you. One day, I will be feeble and my footsteps will falter and I will return to our common father.

But know this: I want you to walk beyond the rim of the mountain where my life ends. I will carry you and your brother as far as I can. But as I falter, you must continue. You must walk beyond me. And don’t for a moment believe that I resent that you will reach lands and truths I will not. I will not look upon my departure from discovered to undiscovered country as a sunset of my own life. I will see that moment as the light of morning, where the moon and night ends, yes, but are eclipsed by a greater light.

You have taken your first steps, Myles, and you are well on your way. I will treasure the steps I get to take with you. But one day, when I return to dust, walk beyond me.

Love,

Your Papa