Acknowledging mortality is liberating
Acknowledging mortality is liberating. Mahatma Gandhi famously said live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.we have no idea what awaits us and there is still so much more here that we left undone.
— from The Landing (Death) · Hope, Not Fear by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
In the book
Others have put the same instrument into a single breath. James Dean said it from one side — dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die today — and Gandhi from the other: live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever; we have no idea what waits past the horizon, and there is still so much here we have left undone. Now picture a different cockpit. […] Here is how to fly toward a landing you can see but can never move — first the mindset, then the steps. The mindset is this: acknowledging mortality is not morbid — it is liberating. Seneca turned the whole fear inside out and called the day we dread as our last the very birthday of eternity. — The Landing (Death)