If I were fully convinced, I’m going to die, I would speak gratitude openly while people are still here. Too often I wait for the “right moment,” but impermanence reminds me that silence can be a missed offering. I would thank my parents for their calm voices, my brother for teaching me clarity over cleverness, and my friends for their companionship. Gratitude would become my daily practice — presence over performance, love as legacy.
Eric Jones’s 17 Things I Would Do Differently If I Were Fully Convinced, I’m Going to Die is a remarkable meditation on impermanence. What struck me most is how ordinary details — the blue of the sky, the hum of the body, the kindness of strangers — become luminous when seen through the lens of mortality.
Key Insights
Slowing down: He begins by saying he wouldn’t change much outwardly, but everything would be transformed by moving more slowly, savoring each moment.
Letting go of work: He imagines quitting his job, not because travel or novelty is the goal, but because routine blinds us to life’s richness.
Connection with nature: He longs for animals, forests, oceans — companions in existence who remind us of our shared strangeness.
Generosity over greed: He envisions flipping the balance, giving away more than he saves, because security is an illusion when death is certain.
Love for all beings: He imagines loving everyone the way he loves his son — a Whitmanesque embrace of humanity.
Awakening through mortality: He sees denial of death as the root of distraction, and awareness of death as the doorway to authentic living.
Reading this, I feel it’s less a “list of things to do” and more a mirror: if death were fully real to us, we wouldn’t necessarily change our external lives, but our inner posture would shift completely. His story echoes the principles — ahimsa in loving all beings, aparigraha in letting go of possessions, and anekantavada in seeing life’s many perspectives.
It reminds me that impermanence isn’t a threat but a teacher. The awareness of death doesn’t diminish life; it magnifies it.
Eric’s essay is a call to live as if every breath is both near-life and near-death — savoring, serving, and loving without delay.
ORIGINAL COMMENT
Eric Jones’s 17 Things I Would Do Differently If I Were Fully Convinced, I’m Going to Die is a remarkable meditation on impermanence. What struck me most is how ordinary details — the blue of the sky, the hum of the body, the kindness of strangers — become luminous when seen through the lens of mortality.
Key Insights
Slowing down: He begins by saying he wouldn’t change much outwardly, but everything would be transformed by moving more slowly, savoring each moment.
Letting go of work: He imagines quitting his job, not because travel or novelty is the goal, but because routine blinds us to life’s richness.
Connection with nature: He longs for animals, forests, oceans — companions in existence who remind us of our shared strangeness.
Generosity over greed: He envisions flipping the balance, giving away more than he saves, because security is an illusion when death is certain.
Love for all beings: He imagines loving everyone the way he loves his son — a Whitmanesque embrace of humanity.
Awakening through mortality: He sees denial of death as the root of distraction, and awareness of death as the doorway to authentic living.
Reading this, I feel it’s less a “list of things to do” and more a mirror: if death were fully real to us, we wouldn’t necessarily change our external lives, but our inner posture would shift completely. His story echoes the principles — ahimsa in loving all beings, aparigraha in letting go of possessions, and anekantavada in seeing life’s many perspectives.
It reminds me that impermanence isn’t a threat but a teacher. The awareness of death doesn’t diminish life; it magnifies it.
Eric’s essay is a call to live as if every breath is both near-life and near-death — savoring, serving, and loving without delay.