In the early 1990’s I was finishing my degree at McGill University while also working for the university’s alumni association. It was the university job that gave me access to the VERY early web (back when we always called it the World Wide Web).
One day, I read that they use an atomic clock to synchronize all of the web servers around the world. I opened my SPRY Mosaic browser and navigated to the Alta Vista search engine (Google was more than 10 years away!) to see what I could learn about the atomic clock.
I landed on the website of the US Naval Observatory, where one of the atomic clocks lived. As I was looking around, I discovered there was a person who’s actual job title was Director of Time. I vividly remember thinking that was the coolest job title in the world!
Flash-forward to today - I’ve been speaking and writing about Mortality for 20 years. This grew out of my own experience with mortality and a desire to help people avoid as many regrets as possible. I feel that the best way to do that is to embrace your own mortality (and the mortality of those you love) as early and as often as possible. This has been the focus and thrust of my message over these last 20 years.
Of course, speaking and writing about Mortality has come with challenges. You might be surprised to learn that not everyone is up for thinking about their mortality.😉 But I was aware of this from the start and embraced it. Leading with Mortality as a headline has always been a conscious choice, because I believe there’s real power in facing the frightening uncertainty around life’s only true certainty.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Joseph Campbell
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the past 20 years of trying to help people with the concept of Mortality. I’ve come to realize that in trying to help people avoid as many regrets as possible, what I’m really helping people with is the concept of Time.
Our priorities shift based on the amount of time we think we have available. If you believe you have 50 or 60 years ahead of you, your priorities may be very different than if you believe you only have 5 or 10 years left. The entire point of the Mortality Manifesto and Mortality Mindset is to help people understand and come to terms with the fact that none of us knows how much time we have ahead of us. As we accept and even embrace Mortality, we can begin to distill our deepest priorities.
In practice, it’s become clear that this isn’t something you do once. You don’t just embrace your Mortality one day and then you’re all set. You can’t just recite the Mortality Manifesto like a daily mantra and expect that you’re good to go. Life doesn’t work like that. I know this firsthand.
I recently remembered the Director of Time job title and have been using that imagery to help me shift how I think about time. (Because of course the Director of Time can shift time whenever they want! Who’s going to stop them?) Reminding myself that I constantly direct my own sense of time, has really brought a fresh new outlook on things. I can choose to focus on TODAY and choose to ensure I make the best of today or I can just as easily choose to focus on the very long-term and look at things through that lens.
I think it’s essential that we’re always directing our perception of time - to fine-tune our priorities and to live according to them.
I’m going to have much more to say about this.
It may even include changing the name of the newsletter to be focused more on time.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this!