{"id":15970,"date":"2011-03-20T21:54:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T02:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artofmanliness.com\/?p=15970"},"modified":"2025-12-15T14:12:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T20:12:30","slug":"what-man-understands-that-he-is-dying-daily-this-is-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/featured\/what-man-understands-that-he-is-dying-daily-this-is-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"What Man Understands That He Is Dying Daily? (This Is Your Life)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dad<\/p>\n

The largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? <\/strong>For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death\u2019s hands. –Seneca<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I was a kid and looked at pictures of my dad like the one above, he seemed so old to me. He seemed to exist in a place so far distant that it inhabited a completely different universe than mine. He was assuredly an adult. He had begun life, and he knew<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago as I was holding Gus, I thought about those old photos, and the thought struck me like a thunderbolt: This is your life<\/em>. I’m sure this revelation seems quite obvious, what else would it be? But what I mean is that I realized that my life had come full circle. Those old pictures of my parents? Now that was me<\/em>. That time that had seemed so far away had arrived. This<\/em> was my life.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

There’s nothing like having a kid to make you acutely aware of your own mortality. As Jerry Seinfeld observed when he had kids, \u201cMake no mistake about why these babies are here \u2013 they are here to replace us.\u201d It’s amazing to look at a baby and realize he is a completely new person, a new person who literally has his whole<\/em> life ahead of him. This little creature hasn’t even gone to kindergarten yet. And that’s when you realize that a third of your <\/em>life is over, a whole dang third of it.<\/p>\n

I realized I had always expected that at a certain point some signal would be given, some change would come over me, and then I would know that my \u201creal\u201d life had started. After all, if people always ask what you want to be when you grow-up, you figure one day you’ll simply know you’ve grown-up, that you’ve hit that milestone and are officially an adult, and that all adults get initiated into this special knowledge. I thought this moment would come when I went off to college or graduated from it, or when I got married, and surely when I had kids. But that transformative moment never came. Each day was just like the rest. I had been living my life all along. This was my life. <\/em><\/p>\n

The shortness of life, the fact that one must enjoy the journey instead of focusing on a destination, is surely one of the most popular themes of books, songs, and movies. And so I was almost hesitant to tread where many have trod before with this article. But the fact of the matter is that all those calls to seize the day just go in one ear and out the other, they exist as a cloud of white noise until you have your own, personal \u201cthis is your life\u201d moment. A moment when the brevity of life hits you like a ton of bricks and knocks the wind out of you. When you finally understand, deep down in your soul, that the clock’s been running since your were born and keeps on ticking away. So perhaps for some man, somewhere, this post will serve as that wake up call.<\/p>\n

\"ManFood for Worms<\/strong><\/p>\n

That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
\nhow the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
\nCain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It
\nmight be the pate of a politician, which this ass
\nnow o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God,
\nmight it not? \u2026<\/p>\n

There’s another: why may not that be the skull of a
\nlawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
\nhis cases, his tenures, and his tricks?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Act V, Scene 1, of Shakespeare’s Hamlet<\/em>, Hamlet and Horatio converse with a pair of gravediggers in a cemetery. When Hamlet looks upon the skulls of the dead, he imagines the life they had once enjoyed in the flesh. This leads him to picture the bones of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, once mighty men, now moldering in the dust like any other mortal. The reality of death hits Hamlet right in the gut, and he has a \u201cthis is your life\u201d moment.<\/p>\n

\"VintageIn looking for old photographs to use on AoM, I’ll often find a picture particularly arresting; the vividness of the man’s life at the time the camera flashed upon it jumps out and holds my gaze. And I’ll take a minute to look at his face, to think about the way his day to day life felt no less real than mine does, that his present, his world, felt no less important, that his feelings and aspirations felt no less vital. And how his body is now lying six feet underground somewhere. His life felt just as endless as ours does and yet he has vanished from the earth. 100 years down the road someone might look at our face in an old wrinkled photograph and wonder about the life we lived. Hold that image in your mind for a second…<\/p>\n

It’s a moment captured very well in the famous carpe diem<\/em> scene in the film, The Dead Poets Society<\/em>:<\/p>\n