Death | Raam Dev

Posts Tagged: Death

Live Each Day To The Fullest

The following is a guest post by David Turner. He emailed this amazing story to me after watching my latest video, Contemplating Contentedness. David’s story touched me in many ways, so I asked if he would allow me to share it with my readers here on the blog.

“We have but limited time in this life and we need to do everything in our power to make the most of it.” ~ Raam Dev

Ain’t that the truth.

Made a few posts here and there about an RIP to a co-worker. But never really shared.

We had a 76 year old guy cleaning our cars at the dealership. He started about 11 years ago after 30+ years at the local foundry. He came to Indiana from West Virginia (from the hills). His dad worked in coal mines. Denver was unique. Had and kept his true hillbilly accent. “You gots sumthin I can tak this tar of with?” Now cleaning cars, one would think black tar… but he was of course talking about tires.

The guys back in the shop loved to tease him. And he gave it right back at them. He’d walk the dealership singing songs, not words but noises followed sometimes by a “yeah man, yeah buddy”. Someone would say something interesting to him and he would make a lil hand gun out of his fingers and make the gunshot noise followed by “yeah” or “yep” or “you can say that again”.

He was a true friend to everyone he met. Never met a stranger that didn’t become his friend in seconds. Of course he didn’t remember half their names, but the folks he befriended remembered him for life. Continue reading →

The Passing of my Grandfather

My grandfather passed away in his sleep last Thursday at the age of seventy.

I clearly remember the very last time I saw him. It was three weeks prior to his passing. He shook my hand, as he always did, and asked how I was doing. I only saw him for a brief moment but now that moment is burned into my memory.

The days following his passing were noticeably, and understandably, tough on my mom, grandma, and my aunts and uncles. It was the first time I had seen many of my relatives cry. I was so impressed by my grandmothers strength. At one point, when she started crying into my shoulder, she held back and said “look at me, crying like a little child”.

In life, choose happiness. Reserve your sadness for the afterlife.

A strange feeling arises every now and then when I realize he’s gone. For that brief moment, it doesn’t feel real. Everything, from the wake to the funeral, felt surreal. I couldn’t help but contemplate how one day, myself and all the people present will meet the same fate. Life felt animated, a picturesque moment in a film without a known duration. Thirty years? Ten years? Five months? Three weeks? Six days? One hour?

My other grandfather, on my dad’s side, died when I was about nine years old. I remember going to his wake and being surrounded by people in black suits towering over me, mourning for a reason I didn’t understand and obviously feeling something I didn’t feel. I really didn’t know him that well and my only other memory of him is of when we visited him in the hospital.

You never know what moment may be the very last you’ll see someone, so it’s important to treat every moment as if it were your, or their, last. Living that way makes you appreciate every moment of life, regardless of the situation. When we take life for granted we forget who we really are and how much those we love mean to us.

Death gives us the ultimate reason to celebrate life.

A little over a week ago I wrote about how every single one of us will die one day and why that means we should all choose happiness and growth in life.

Almost every day I remind myself of this fact and each time I do I seem to appreciate life a little bit more. It reminds me that I have no reason to be unhappy; no reason to be angry; no reason to be frustrated; no reason to be unmotivated. It pushes me to take action and do the things I’ve always wanted to do. It reminds me to appreciate family, friends, and most of all, myself. It reminds me that, as my Uncle Dan always says, “your health is your wealth” and that all the money and fame in the world is pointless if I don’t have my health.

“Your health is your wealth.”

Take care of your health.

Choose Happiness and Growth

There are few things in life that are absolutely, one hundred percent, guaranteed. Death is one of those things. Take a moment to think about that. Every single one of us, no matter how smart, rich, or popular, every single one of us is going to die. The flesh and organic matter that is this body is guaranteed to one day cease to exist.

It’s not just us either. Everything ends one day. Even this Earth will be gone, most likely consumed by the sun when it expands to a red giant billions of years from now. The entire universe, with all the planets, stars, and galaxies, will also be gone one day. And while it will probably happen a lot sooner, we can be certain that any memory of our existence will also gone when the universe goes.

The bottom line is this: You can be guaranteed that every single thing you see, think, do, or create, every single person you know or have heard of, every single place you’ve been or know about, will one day cease to exist.

So what does all this have to do with happiness? Well, if we can be assured that we’ll all die one day and that everything will eventually be gone, then it’s safe to assume that the only reason for existence is to experience life while it’s here.

So what’s life? Well, we know that death most often brings sadness and is associated with the ending of progression, so this would mean that life, being the polar opposite of death, should be associated with happiness and growth. I propose that choosing anything less than happiness and growth in our life is associating ourselves with death and thereby ignoring life.

This should give no one any reason to accept anything in life that constrains their own happiness or growth (whether mental, physical, or spiritual) or enables the constraint of others’ happiness or growth. To do either of these is to disregard, neglect, and eschew life itself.

Life is our chance. It’s our small window of opportunity. Our situations may vary and our circumstances may differ, but we all have the ability to make a conscious, day-to-day decision to strive for happiness over sadness; for growth over stagnation; for life over death.

Choose happiness. When something upsets you — the car in front of you cuts you off; you feel yourself getting agitated; someone is rude or unpleasant towards you; things just don’t seem to be going your way — make a conscious decision to let it go and choose happiness. Don’t let your circumstances become an excuse not to be happy. You’re alive right now. That’s the only reason you need to be happy.

Choose growth. Do you feel as though you’re a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday? If you don’t, then it’s time to make a conscious decision to do something to improve yourself every single day. Stop watching so much TV. Stop oversleeping. Do something every day to improve your health (both mental and physical!). Small changes over a long period always equate to a greater overall change. As long as you’re living, you should be growing. Stagnation is for death.

It’s your life! What will you do with it?

Count Your Marbles

Sean Johnson’s post on 1040 Marbles talks about how we should learn to appreciate the finiteness of our lives by learning to count our marbles (quite literally). Although I feel as though I’ve already learned to appreciate each day much more than I used to, I’m considering implementing the marble technique.

What is the Purpose of an Ending?

Everything has an ending, doesn’t it? When we’re talking about life and relationships, the ending often brings out many emotions. Opposite to the ending, the start and beginning are often associated with joy and happiness. Other endings and beginnings, however, are often not so defined.

When you’re hungry, you feel a sense of gratification the minute you start eating. When you’re on an airplane starting a 5-day vacation to a tropical island, you’re happy and relaxed knowing the next few days will be enjoyable. When a baby is born, happiness is associated with the event. As the child grows up, all he is concerned with is how he will enjoy that day.

But when you finish eating and you’re full, you quickly forget the gratification you felt minutes earlier. Your return trip home on the airplane is filled with only memories of the enjoyment you experienced, as you slowly adjust back into the thinking mode of daily life that you associate with grunt work. When the baby grows up, has kids and grand-kids of his own, he will lie on his deathbed where there is no happiness to be found. As the child grew older, he found less and less happiness from life. Continue reading →