Thinking about death is a quick way to get honest clarity about life

By David McElroy · July 30, 2012

Six months ago today, I had surgery to remove cancer in my left breast. It was an episode so far out of my normal experience of life that it almost seems as though it never happened. And now, six months later, one of my best friends is going in for major surgery today, too.

When I had my brush with cancer, I didn’t think I was going to die, but I knew it was a possibility. As my friend goes in for some serious surgery, I don’t expect her to die, either, but I know that she could die. We all react differently to the idea of death. Some people get depressed. Some people think of others they’ve lost. It has a different effect on me. It makes me think seriously about life.

(If you weren’t around for my cancer scare last January, here’s the article in which I first discussed it. And here’s what I wrote as I was going in for surgery that day.)

I don’t know about you, but I have a terrible habit of taking life for granted. There have been certain chunks of my life when I’ve absolutely wasted my time, simply because it seemed as though my time was almost limitless. When I’ve done that, I’ve felt bored and unfulfilled. I think that’s one of the real causes of some people turning to various kinds of drugs or other addictions. (For me, the addiction was sugar. I’ve written before about feeling like a “sugarholic.”)

But when you think about how limited life can be — and the inevitability of its ending — it makes you want to use it more wisely. It makes you want to figure out what really matters to you. It makes you want to adjust how you’re spending your time and who you’re spending your time with.

I felt this way six months ago, and I’m feeling that same queasy feeling right now as I think about my friend’s surgery today. In these last six months, I feel as though I’ve changed. I don’t know whether it’s visible to anyone else, but I feel as though I care a little less about whether others agree with me. I feel more of an urgency to do some things that matter. And I feel a much greater sense of urgency about changing who I’m around.

When you get to the end of your life, what do you want to look back and see that you’ve done? Do you want to see that you’ve invested your hours at an office and that you’ve earned a lot of money? Do you want to see that you’ve spent your years concentrating on political activism of one kind or another? Or would you rather see that you’ve invested time in building the kind of loving family you want? If you’re a Christian, would you like to know that you’ve spend your time seeking and following God’s will for your life?

Some people never get to the point of realizing that they’ve wasted their lives and that there was no purpose to their lives. Others are fortunate enough to get a gnawing feeling somewhere along the way that something’s wrong and that something needs to change. It can be a painful process to learn enough about yourself to hunger for something else, but if you’re able to create real change in your life because of it, the pain of self-discovery can be worth it.

I’ve wasted a lot of time, but I’m emotionally more awake than I’ve ever been. I’ve clarified the things that are important to me. Life matters more than ever. Family matters more to me than ever. Love matters more to me than ever. Serving God and changing the world for the better matter to me even more than ever.

I can’t go back and become a baby again in order to relive my life and make up for the wasted time. The baby that’s born today — such as the one above — will have to go through the same mistakes that each of us has gone through (and maybe some of his own that hasn’t even occurred to us). The only thing we can do is start where we are and work to make each day matter. And that’s hard to do, even when you’re sure it’s what you want.

Life is a precious gift. I’ve wasted too much of that gift, but I’m learning how to squeeze more out of it and make it matter. I’m still learning and I’ll keep learning. At least I understand what the goal is now, though.

As my friend goes in for surgery, I pray that she’s safe and that everything will be fine in the end. I don’t like watching her go through this, just as I didn’t like going through something similar six months ago. But if things such as this — very light brushes against death — are the best way to get us to wake up and find more meaning in life, it’s worth the pain of going through them.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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