THINKING ABOUT THE GOOD LIFE
I love reading books about how to live the good life. I recently read (and re-read) The Second Mountain by David Brooks, a marvelous and profound work that explains how to live a meaningful life. This book, along with Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, have given me new words and images to share with the airmen I interact with (I highly recommend both books).
However, as much as I love reading and thinking about living the good life, the book I have most recently finished, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, is not about how to live well, but how to end well. It is also a book about death and dying.
THINKING ABOUT THE GOOD DEATH
My most recent passport photo
I am not enjoying this book. I know I am getting older, but I don’t feel old. However, recent pictures force me to face the truth, I am old, and I am getting older. When I look at group pictures where I am with the airmen, my first reaction is to wonder, “Who is that old guy with the airmen?” For much of my life getting older and dying have been helpful intellectual ideas. Knowing I was going to die, and visualizing my funeral, have been helpful because they forced me to think hard about who I want to be before I die. However, I have not spent more than a few moments thinking about the details of declining physical and mental health. But as this book points out, physical and mental deterioration are most likely in my future.
TAKING ACTION
I am not going to read this book a second time. But I am going to do some serious thinking about what I want the end of my life to look like. I am going to visualize, not my funeral, but a decline in physical and mental abilities. And then I am going to make a plan.
Thirty-five years ago, I wrote a personal mission statement about who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live. I took m
y time creating this document. I went into the woods for three days and was all alone thinking and writing. This mission statement has been very helpful when making decisions about where to live and what kind of work I wanted to do. It has also been helpful in times when I have been discouraged, reminding me of where I have been and where I want to go. I encourage all our airmen to take the time to write a personal mission statement.
As I read Being Mortal,I am thinking it is time for me to write a new mission statement. I want to work as hard on this next statement as I did the first one, but I need to consider some different elements.
When I wrote my first mission statement I had no idea what specific events would unfold in my life. When I wrote that first statement it would have been impossible to anticipate that I would teach high school (and enjoy it), live in Phoenix, make multiple trips to Africa, or live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the same way,I can’t anticipate how my health will decline or how long my savings will last. But I can make a plan now detailing how I want to think about these things and let others know what I am thinking.
It is possible that my physical and mental health will continue for the next 20 years, and then one day, I’ll just die in my sleep. I am praying for that. However, over the Christmas break I will start planning, in an intellectual, spiritual, and practical way; what I want my life to look like if I experience a slow decline like so many older people do.
I am often frustrated by how little thought young people put into thinking about the good life. I don’t want to be guilty of not thinking about a good death.
