To Losing Nothing

After my own comparatively minor brush with death a few years ago, when I was 19, I pledged to live my life as fully as possible, as though I had nothing to lose. For a few months afterward, I consciously tried to fight against the status quo. It’s so easy to get stuck in the waiting place, putting things off until later, even when those things are vitally important to making your dreams come true. But the truth is Rachel, in order to make progress, you need to physically and mentally fight against the momentum of ordinary events. The default state of any new idea is failure. It’s the execution–the fight against inertia–that matters. You have to remember to go against your instinct, to confront the ordinary, and to put up a fight.

This is, obviously, mentally and physically taxing. My own conscious focus on the fight very slowly faded until, after just a couple of months, it was gone. I had once again become a cog in the insidious machine called quo.

I was always confused and fascinated how so many people with great dreams and great visions of the future can live such ordinary, repetitive lives. But now I know. I’ve experienced it through a very dear friend. Doing something remarkable with your life is tough work, and it helps to remember one simple, motivating fact: in a blink, you could be gone. To paraphrase Steve Jobs: remembering that you are going to die is the best way you can avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.


You really have nothing to lose.


I realize Rachel that all this is so vague and corny and potentially obvious, but it's the obvious things we tend to gloss over. I don't believe in karma or a god, but I find that contemplating the scale and preciousness of life helps me make day-to-day decisions that are more compatible with my longer-term perspective of life.