Remember You Don't Have Forever

There’s an insightful clip of a New York woman approaching the entrepreneur and zealous business personality Gary Vaynerchuk in his vehicle. Gary rolls down his window and the woman asks for one piece of motivational advice. Without hesitation Gary says, “You’re going to die.” She instantly gets it and thanks him, skipping off into what likely became a highly energized phase of her life.

In essence, what Gary communicated in those four words was, get your priorities in order and act on them urgently. What reason is there not to?

And what reason is there not to? The element of life’s vastness that many are hesitant to acknowledge is that in the grandest scheme, nearly everything becomes insignificant. Some over-index on this and choose to do nothing at all, while far too few convert the seeming harshness of grand-scheme-insignificance into a tool, a freedom to live out their fullest selves knowing that one day all returns to dust.

In other words, we live and operate confidently not to be remembered (a futile effort, per the Stoics), but because we know we’ll be forgotten.

It’s the difference between, “You’re going to die, why try?” and “You’re going to die, why not try?” The latter view offers a chance at leading an invigorated life—a life with an end you can face contentedly. Grand scheme insignificance frees us to be everything, anything, and nothing (the latter, of course, still being something to you).

“Close is the time when you will forget all things; and close, too, the time when all will forget you,” quips Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius in Book VII of Meditations.

Accordingly and with all urgency, free yourself to be.

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