Many of us have this fear that one day we lay in our deathbed looking back on a life full of regret and lost potential.
But death is far away, so we usually dispense with the notion of our own mortality and move on to the things of more immediate importance. What if we would take this seriously now?
For we can never know for sure, when our fate will meet us.
"You are going to die! But dying before you are ready, when you don't expect it, that is what is scary to me!" ~ Ryan Blankers
For 7 days the ikario team participated in contemplative exercises to face our own mortality. Can sense be made of one's own death?
And what benefit does this bring us in the present?
OUR TASKS
Here we are going to share with you the 7 days and what we did. To see what results we came up with, have a look at the video. These descriptions are for you if you want to do this practice yourself.
DAY 1: Either find somebody who would like to have a deeper philosophical discussion with you about death and dying for a reasonable amount of time or grab a pen and paper and start writing anything down that comes to mind about that topic.
DAY 2+3: Go to a place where you can't be bothered and sit down there. Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and contemplate your mortality. Imagine the experience of dying. Find out if you are scared and what you are scared about.
DAY 4: Visit a graveyard. As you go down the roes of graves imagine the lives of those laying dead now. How might they have died? What had they planned and where just in the middle of executing? See if you can find a grave where somebody died your age. Notice if you feel anything.
DAY 5: Visit a graveyard. As you go down the roes of graves imagine the lives of those laying dead now. How might they have died? What had they planned and where just in the middle of executing? See if you can find a grave where somebody died your age. Notice if you feel anything.
DAY 6: Take some time and answer the two questions:
a) if you knew for sure that you would die in 10 days, what would you do with your remaining time?
b) if you knew for sure that you would die in 10 years, what would you do with your remaining time?
DAY 7: Based on what you wrote yesterday - what would you change about your life today? Write down everything that you want to do in the next 10 years and the things that you can do or start doing RIGHT NOW. Then go out and do it.
Death is as personal as it gets but if you feel like you found something valuable doing this exercise or by watching the video, share it with us in the comments below. Best of wishes & may you find meaning!