Brief Review: “Life Lessons”

“Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living” by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler is an interesting non-fiction read on the meaning and how to live life — from the perspective of the deathbed looking backwards.

The book covers several topics and areas where individuals have particularly unique insights — regrets or clarity about the way in which they’d like to leave their life with regards to: Authenticity, Love, Relationships, Loss, Power, Guilt, Time, Fear, Anger, Play, Patience, Surrender, Forgiveness, Happiness.

The lessons of the book are not unique — but the stories help deliver the powerful message in a quick and relatable way.

A few of the key points:

• Love: Peace and happiness = unconditional love. Grateful = powerful; all abundance is based on being grateful for what we have.
• Authenticity: This is the key lesson of life: to find our authentic selves, and to see the authenticity in others. You are what you are, not your disease, not what you do. Life is about being, not doing.
• Fear: Don’t be afraid of failing. There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn’t try. These reasons seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us. They hold life at a distance. Life will be over sooner than we think. If we have bikes to ride and people to love, now is time.
• Play: I wish I had not taken life so seriously — “playing is our inner joy, outwardly expressed. It can be laughing, singing, dancing, swimming, hiking, cooking, … anything else we have fun doing”. Play makes us feel younger, more positive.
• Surrender — “Many of us labor under the illusion that control is always good, that it would be dangerous to just let the universe take care of things. How do we surrender? We let go of our way. We learn to trust in God. There’s an important difference between surrender and just plain quitting. When we surrender, we accept it just as it is. To turn away from the situation is to give up. To turn into it is surrender.
• Happiness: Interesting observation that people who are near death are sometimes happier. And some folks who were near death and then “recover’ are less happy. “We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand that our time is limited and we really need to make it count.”

Conclusion — most people have everything they need to make their life work and be happy. Reminds me of one of my favorite Ted Talks by Srikumar Rao: Plug into your Hard Wired Happiness.

The book describes life and its trials and tribulations as a “school”…a nice analogy is given:Michelangelo said that the sculptures he created were already in there — he simply removed the excess to reveal the precious essence….you do the same things — you learn lessons in life, you chip away to reveal the wonderful you inside.

Cliche as it sounds the primary lesson the dying teach us is to live every day to its fullest — do we really touch and taste life, do we see and feel the extraordinary, especially in the ordinary (food, sky, ocean, etc.)?