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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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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