Lesson 1
You Are Going to Die"You only get one ride. Make it count."
Gregory Keough
As silly as it sounds, the fact that you're going to die is something most people spend little to no time thinking about.
This is the first and most obvious life lesson. It's also the most ignored.
But how you approach this fact will change how you live.
You are going to die. Let me say that again:
You. Are. Going. To. Die.
Most people don't live like they believe that.
It's 100% certain. A definitive rule of the human experience.
And yet most people plan their vacation more carefully than they plan their life.
They spend more time worrying about their outfit than their soul.
Your life is a journey with a guaranteed destination: death.
Not preparing for that is like starting a cross-country trip without a map, gear, or idea where you're headed.
It makes no sense. But most people live this way.
We used to experience death more directly. It was common, personal. In most of the world, it still is.
But not in the U.S. Here, death has been sanitized.
People die behind hospital curtains. The bodies disappear. The grief is private. The lesson is lost.
And because we don't see death, we don't think about it.
I've had a different experience. I've been close to death maybe too many times.
When I was a kid, I almost fell 100 feet off a cliff while exploring a waterfall.
A tree root saved me.
I survived gunfire encounters. Including one where a bullet went through my notebook on the table and just missed my head.
During a rescue, a fellow officer and good friend died.
I'll never forget the look in his eyes as he was dying. Or the long helicopter ride back to base with his body on the floor. An experience that later led to my receiving the Intelligence Star.
I was there to recover the bodies of my father-in-law and two others after their car went off a ferry in El Salvador.
We had to recover the bodies in front of my children.
I've seen cancer, shootings, car wrecks. I've seen people die in peace. And in terror.
And I can tell you this: You do have control over how prepared you are.
But you can't prepare without thinking about it.
Embracing death isn't morbid. It's liberating.
Because once you accept you're going to die, you stop wasting time.
You start living.
Faith helps with this. And we'll talk more about God later.
But even if you're not religious, the power of remembering death still applies.
“Can't push a button and just hit rewind”