Every single day, it happens five times.
And at random intervals.
Since I never know when it’s going to occur, I’m always surprised when I see it.
I look down at my Apple watch or my iPhone to see a text saying:
No, I’m not being threatened by anyone in particular.
(At least not through this app.)
Instead, it’s a blunt reminder that I’ve signed up We Croak.
The app is based on a paradoxical Bhutanese belief that the best way to live a happy life is to contemplate your death five times a day.
And, in case you weren’t aware, everyone from Psychology Today to the Business Insider agrees that Bhutan is the happiest country in the world.
(It’s also, as of 2020, thanks to its lush forests, the only country in the world with a negative carbon footprint.)
Anyway, there are many ways the Bhutanese culture promotes happiness, but I find plenty to explore in just this one practice of remembering our mortality five times a day.
I was contemplating writing about this at some future moment, but with RBG’s death this weekend, that devastating loss brought everything home.
First and foremost, I love the irony that rather than avoiding the topic of death entirely as a strategy to improve our well-being, the opposite is true:
Instead, remembering our mortality, and even appreciating its vulnerability, ultimately elevates our mood.
The unpredictably of the reminders also reinforces this, echoing how little control we really have over anything.
As I wrote in one recent newsletter, it’s really true that:
Life is a Fragile Picnic.
Each of the five reminders offers a quote, which range dramatically in content and feel and come from poets and philosophers and even hospice workers.
Admittedly, some are rather grim.
Take Benjamin Franklin’s:
“Death takes no bribes.”
Others, like this one from Walt Whitman, are meant to inspire:
“Re-examine all
that you have been told…
dismiss that which insults your soul.”
While some are more poetic and evocative, like these words from W.H. Auden:
“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”
Another favorite, and this comes from Steve Job’s commencement speech which you really should read in its entirety HERE, is:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
Ironically, I am also made keenly aware of mortality a separate five times every single day because that’s how many walks Belle gets.
Multiple short walks have done wonders for her health.
Each is a single lap around the roof of my building and takes 7-12 minutes.
The morning ones are the hardest since she struggles to get up, needing a friendly boost of her hindquarters.
Once she’s moving outside though, she adopts a cheerful, almost supermodel strut, and unleashed she often walks a few feet ahead of me.
(Just FYI: I am also quite convinced she sneaks out at night, since several times a month, someone will greet her enthusiastically by name––someone I swear I’ve never met.)
There’s always joy in these walks, but it’s always bittersweet.
Gone are the days when I first had her and from the fifth-floor landing of my loft building (the stairs were straight up and down), I would toss a tennis ball.
She’d chase it five floors down.
Then retrieve it five flights back up.
And she lived to do it again and again and again.
(this is actually our old building)
Coming full circle, there are so many great RBG quotes but I want to end with one that really stands out for me and reinforces everything above.
In just the same way that contemplating our death leads to deep happiness…
As that great lady said:
“So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”
