let your dying thought be Yes!

Let your dying thought be

Yes, I have lived!

Perhaps you are young and death might seem far away. But regardless of your age, one day, death will come. And in that moment, in that final moment of life, we won’t have any choice about how we feel. Either we will feel yes, I have lived!, or we will feel no, I haven’t lived yet, I’m not ready to die! But it will be too late. And that final yes or no, to death, will be a summary, a distillation of how one has lived one’s life.

If we have lived fully, grasping every opportunity that life has offered; saying yes to life; taking chances, sometimes falling down flat on our face, feeling wounded, hurt, and yet picking ourselves up and carrying on, still with that yes in our heart; if that is how we have lived our life, then when the moment of death comes, there will be this great yes, a big sigh, a feeling of happiness. Yes, I have lived, thank you for this life.

But if on the other hand we have merely existed; saying no to so many things that life has offered us, out of fear, out of laziness, from a lack of courage and from having been wounded in the past – there are a thousand and one reasons to say no to life – but in that no we are left with a longing, a longing for everything that we are missing out on: that aliveness that comes when we are living from a space of yes to life. That will still be in us, as an unfulfilled yearning.

So whilst there are many reasons to say no, set them aside. Be courageous. Seize the day, the moment, with a great yes. Take some risks and see what life really has to offer. And if we live our life this way, certainly we will know the full range of human emotion. We will know ecstasy and we will know great suffering. Life will have ups and downs, twists and turns. Emotionally, it will be a rollercoaster. But at least, when that final day comes, when death comes knocking, we will, with our last breath, have that thought-feeling of yes, it’s okay, death can come, for I have lived!