On How We Judge Our Lives in the Face of Death

I’ve always felt at home in the role of the explorer, the one who goes first. Discovering something new, living through an experience no one has lived before me — that’s what truly lights me up. Those traits even showed up in my genetic test as dominant features of my character.

The same traits surfaced in business. Whenever the team needed to grow new competencies, I preferred to “feel out” the new roles myself first — to dive into fields I knew nothing about, to study the fine print of professions I’d never touched. For me it was interesting, even thrilling. But that approach drained my resources and pulled me away from the things that actually mattered, especially against a constant shortage of time. You can’t master every profession — each field has its own experts. That’s the whole beauty of teamwork and the division of labor! Why repeat the mistakes others have already made and drawn their hard lessons from?

Still, the experience made me stop and think: what is it that drives me to keep trying everything myself anyway? Strangely enough, that question led me to something deeper — to questions about life’s values in the context of our… mortality.

Stoicism teaches us to reflect on our own death regularly: memento mori — remember that you will die. Reflections like these soften the anxiety before the inevitable and help us see that life is too short to spend on trifles — that each day is worth living well, as if it were the last.

So I asked myself: how will I judge my own life when my final hour comes? Which criteria might actually matter?

For example:

— The variety of life experience, the uniqueness of the moments lived.

— The depth and breadth of the knowledge gained.

— The quality of social ties and the sincerity of relationships.

— The level of material well-being.

— Standing and social status.

— A contribution to society, a mark left on history.

— Carrying on the family line, building a large family.

— Spirituality and harmony with one’s inner world.

The list could obviously run much longer.

Each of us “weighs” these criteria differently, and that’s exactly what makes our lives — and the decisions we make — unique. Often, without even being aware of it, our choices and our actions are aimed at maxing out one measure or another.

In the end I realized that yes, I really do make a lot of irrational decisions. Probably they lead me, at times, down a less efficient path in business or in my personal life — but they enrich my experience, they let me live through situations no one else has and pull important lessons out of them. And when I think about death and picture what I’ll arrive with — a hyper-efficient, optimized life, smooth as a robot’s, or a vivid one, full of experience, not without its regrets — I choose experience, every time. To simply become “the richest man in the cemetery,” as Steve Jobs put it? No, thank you. But to create something meaningful and give something back to society? Yes — that matters. And so, step by step, I sorted out my own priorities.

And what criteria will you use to judge your own life, when your hour comes?

Here’s to health and a long life worth living! 😎