If you were to die tomorrow, what would you regret?
"Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone." - Neale Donald Walsch
The Buried Life During my Freshman year of college, I started a "bucket list" of sorts. This idea was inspired by a TV show called The Buried Life in which the cast would ask themselves and others, "What do you want to do before you die?" Being a first year in college, I decided to call my list "Jeremy's 100 Things To Do Before I Graduate College" To me, graduating college symbolized the end of youthful freedom and the beginning of adulthood. Although I've since learned that "adulthood" is actually also pretty fun, at the time it was a good motivator to seize the moment. Through the next four years, I checked the list religiously, regularly adding to it and crossing things off.
Once I graduated, I decided to continue the idea, but this time to create a true bucket list -- a collection of things I want to do before I die. I put a ton of stuff on this list, and would revisit it periodically; however, I found that something very different was happening this time around -- the list was getting longer and longer, but I wasn't making much progress towards actually crossing things off. Why was that? Had I gotten lazy? Was I too busy now with all of my real world responsibilities? Were my goals too lame that I was no longer motivated? Or maybe my goals were actually too ambitious and complex? No. The reality was, I'd lost my sense of urgency.
In college, the impending reality of adulthood -- that is, graduation -- drove me to do the most I could with my remaining unrestrained days before they disappeared forever. But after graduation, when I created my new true bucket list, I felt as though I had plenty of time -- my whole life, in fact -- to complete the list. Without any real sense of urgency, I was neglecting these important life goals of mine. But then the COVID-19 global pandemic hit and we were all reminded of how instantly our lives can turn upside down. And so, as I sat quarantined in my apartment reflecting on the disruption and devastation of the past few months had been, I contemplated life and death.
Lessons about life and death First, Bobby. He had been one of my best friends since elementary school and tragically passed away from heart complications on April 12, 2003, at the age of 12. At that young, I couldn't fully grasp what had happened, but I distinctly remember realizing that life isn't always fair no matter how good of a person you are. Bobby was the best kind of person -- kind, playful, earnest, helpful -- and his family was perfect. Seeing his mom and younger brother, Pete, at the memorial service was the first time I can remember crying from seeing someone else's pain.
Then, Zavell. We became close after college and hung out almost every weekend to play basketball and eat fried chicken sandwiches. I admired him, a lot. He was poised to do amazing things, already a leading expert in cannabis law. On January 11, 2017, he took his own life. It didn't make sense to me -- just the week before, we'd met up with a couple of our other friends for a fun night out. I was confronted with the reality that people can be really good at hiding their pain. That was another hard lesson: Tell the people you love that you love them, more often than you think you need to. Depression sucks. Please, check in with those whom you care about.
Finally, Mom. This one has a happier ending. She went in for back surgery the morning of Dec 2, 2019. By evening, she was in the ICU undergoing hypothermic protocol because she had gone into cardiac arrest after surgery. But I wasn't aware of any of this until I woke up the next morning to a text from my Dad -- "Jeremy, please call me when you see this." Chills. He explained that we didn't know what state of mind Mom would be in when she awoke, if she might even be pronounced brain dead, so we agreed that I would fly back home from New York (and my sister would from Santa Barbara) ASAP so that we could all be together to receive the news. On the flight over, I prayed for the first time since I stopped believing in Santa Claus. But Mom's a freakin' fighter; against the odds, she made it for a full recovery. And thankfully, as my Dad likes to say, we got the lesson without the consequence.
Life is so fragile, cherish it.
COVID-19 On March 11, the WHO declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. I had just purchased my first investment property with two friends on March 1, and shortly after the announcement, our vacation rental business started receiving cancellation notices from all of our future bookings one by one, until every single booking was lost. We had more debt on our hands than we'd ever had in our lives, and no future revenue potential to pay for it. A couple of months later, I got laid off from my job where I'd just received a promotion at the beginning of the year. After working so hard only to see things fall apart, all the overwhelm and disappointment put me into a mental space that absolutely terrified me. I found myself pondering the unattainability of happiness, the pointlessness of trying your best, the meaninglessness of life.
By no means do I think I was at "rock bottom," but I was in a deeper hole than I'd ever been in before and it was dark down there. But when you feel like you've got nothing to lose, something cool happens -- you stop giving a fuck about what might go wrong. It's a scary place to be, no doubt, and should be approached responsibly; but it can also be incredibly empowering. I forced myself to strip down all of my preconceived notions of success, meaning, a worthy life, etc. and began chipping away, piece by piece, to get to the core of who I really am and what I really care about. In software sales, we talk a lot about the importance of asking "discovery" questions, so I applied some to myself.
Asking yourself tough (and possibly uncomfortable) questions If you were to die tomorrow, what would you regret? What did you hope to have accomplished by now, but haven't? What's prevented you from getting it done? Are those just excuses or valid reasons? Are you more disappointed that you haven't achieved those things OR that you just never gave it a real shot?
Have you achieved things that you thought would make you happy, but they haven't? Are you happy? Are you capable of being truly happy? How long have you been feeling this way? Why haven't you done something about it yet? Are you afraid of change, failure, being judged, something else?
How do you define success? Why? Whose approval/admiration have you been seeking? What will society think of your definition? What about your friends, family, high school classmates, old coworkers, that girl you're trying to impress? Does that matter? If you achieve success, by your definition, will you be happy?
My WAY This project is my response to some of those questions and my attempt at finding answers to the rest of them. This is my WAY. And I hope it inspires at least one other person to find their WAY, too. Thanks for reading :)