In the long run we are all dead…

John Maynard Keynes*

In the end we are all dead.

It is sad when people die before their time: JFK, MLK, John Lennon, Steve Jobs, my father… way too many people to list here.   However, if you really think about it, that person would have died anyway — if not today then one day down the road.

In a way, the very first sentence does take a lot of pressure off of us.  Instead of rushing to accomplish and get everything done before the final deadline, we should remember to enjoy the now.  It is the little moments of joy we should take time to treasure; it is in the here and now that we should make our lives a life worth living and remembering.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Steve Jobs (The lost interviews)

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, another expert in going before his time: It is doing things that are worth remembering or writing things worth reading that will give us a shot at immortality.

* The full quote is: “In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”