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An article by Ben Cohen, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the start of the 2025 New Year, was titled as follows: "Happy New Year! It's Time to Think About Your Death."
Even though time has passed, and we are more than halfway done with this year, I think a mention of Cohen's article is still "timely." As long as we are all still alive, "time" is definitely with us, and I have echoed Cohen's "It's Time to Think About Your Death" message in a number of my previous blog postings (and not always at the start of a new year).
My commentaries have been characterized, mostly, by urging "Momento Mori," which translates from the Latin as "remember you must die." Thinking about your death, and remembering that it is on its way, is always time appropriate. In fact (and this is argued in Cohen's article), it makes a good deal of sense to get out ahead of that event in your thinking, planning, preparing, and doing.
Cohen's article was published under the subtitle of his column, "Science of Success," and is focused on how billionaire Ron Shaich prepares, each year, to make sure that his death, when it comes, won't find him regretting something he either did, or failed to do (and mostly the latter). Shaich is pictured above. His annual technique for preparing for death is what Shaich calls a "premortem," a pre-death accounting, as opposed to a post-death accounting. Cohen describes Shaich's annual "premortem" exercise as follows:
Most people give up on their New Year’s resolutions after a few weeks. Shaich, 71, has been looking back from his deathbed for a few decades.
And he doesn’t call it a New Year’s resolution. He calls it writing a “premortem.”
By now, it’s a tradition. He escapes on vacation, clears his mind and takes a break from doing nothing to do the most important thing he does all year.
“I imagine my body old and fragile, my breathing shallow, my life energy almost extinguished,” he wrote in “Know What Matters,” his 2023 book. “I try to evoke the feelings I want to have in that moment—a sense of peace, completion and, most importantly, self-respect. Then I ask myself: What am I going to do now to ensure that when I reach that ultimate destination, I’ve done what I need to do?”
In business, and in other parts of our life, the idea of planning ahead, having objectives, and having a realistic way you might achieve them, seems good to me. If we are focused on the "Science of Success," which Cohen is, of course, then doing all those things will help us be "successful" in what we undertake.
However, I do have a comment. Shaich's "premortem" system considers that our "life," upon which we have each embarked, most mysteriously, is nothing more than a human project, and that it is important, therefore, to plan ahead, to make sure we accomplish the project according to our own plan, and so that we end up with "self-respect."
I want to suggest another way of thinking about life, which is to think of life as a "gift," a gift given to us, and not a "project" of our own design and construction.
If we do think of life that way, we can never "fail," because life, in that frame, is not a "project" at all. It is a wonderful "gift" given to us, an astounding encounter with a reality - our ultimate reality - which is both amazing and undeserved.
As I consider the picture of Shaich - much clearer in the hard copy edition of The Journal, I see the image of "self-respect," but I don't sense much "joy" or "gratitude."
When I am getting ready to die, I hope I can look back on some projects of which I am proud. Most of all, though, I want to laugh and smile, and feel grateful for the amazing and wonderful experience of having been alive!
Foundation of Freedom
I love the turn on this you took at the end. Es perfecto.
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