One day you'll close your eyes for the last time
A spoken motivational monologue (YouTube) that urges listeners to recognize their mortality as a motivator to stop living in past/future thought and instead be present. The speaker explains how the ego and constant thinking pull people away from the present, gives an anecdote (an attentive waiter) to show how presence creates opportunities, and finishes with a forceful call-to-action to stop postponing meaningful choices and to seize the day.
Chapters
Someday you're going to close your eyes and you're not going to open them again. Someday you will shut your eyes for the very last time and you won't open them again. Your experience here on this earth is going to be over. And all the things that you spent so long worrying about, stressing about, complaining about, they're not going to matter. And all the things that you were too scared to go for, that you thought could mean something or have an impact on other people, but you were just too scared. Those are the things that in your last moments you're going to wish you had gone for. And when, when, let's say, for example, you know you have only a year left. Because part of the human condition is we begin to think that we have tons of time. We don't have tons of time. And if you knew for a fact that you had 1 year, 12 months, 365 days left, what would you do differently? Would you still be working at this job that you don't really like? Would you still be trying to impress people that you don't really care about? Would you still be worrying about things that don't really matter to you? Would you spend all your time either living in regret of the past or anxiety about the future if you knew you only had one month? How would you live it? It's likely that you would be more present. It's likely that you would realize how not present you have been. And this is what happens. We begin to think we have tons of time and the things that we really care about, we'll get to them later. We'll just get by for now. We'll just accept these shitty friendships, this shitty job, this shitty relationship, the shitty way that we're treating ourselves. It's fine for now because later on we'll fix it. But later on never comes. We just keep saying later on. And then the day comes where it's later on, it still hasn't happened. And then we think we're too old and then it's too late. And then next thing you know, we're shutting our eyes and we can't open them again. So if you knew you had a year, what, what would you drop right now where you're sitting, where you're standing, where you're listening to this video, what would you that you're holding on to so tightly in your mind and stressing about? What would you drop right now where you're standing? And why can't you just drop that right now? Because nothing in life is guaranteed, none of us know how much long longer we have left. And your stuff, spending your whole life in the past or in the future, you're never actually living it if that's how you're spending your life. And that is how most of us spend our lives. What happens is our ego. We come here to live, so we have the self that comes here to live, but then we have the ego self, the one that is thinking all the time, the one that is creating our beliefs all the time. They can be good, it can be bad, but what it is, is it's taking us away from our actual experience of being here and being alive. And so ego wants us to stress about rent in a month. Ego wants us to dwell on last, the last six months, the last year. And we're never actually here. We're never actually seeing the opportunities that are right fucking in front of us. And your whole life goes by, and you've never actually been in the present moment. You've never been here. You haven't lived it. You've lived in the past, which was all in your head, in your thoughts, and you've lived in the future, which is all in your head, in your thoughts, but you haven't ever been in the present. So you haven't ever actually been in your life. You have never been present in the moment, Living your actual life right here, right now. Because the only moment that life is happening is right here, right now. This moment right here. So when I tell people to meditate, the biggest reason it changes people's lives is because they come in. And when someone is coming in to do a meditation, or if I'm doing a meditation video, I. I say, whatever has come before, drop it. Be here now. Choose to arrive to this moment right now, because it's all you have. And this moment is where your power is. It's where your life is. It's not in some memory. It's not in some worry or some imagined future event. It's now. And you might be thinking, well, how can I just drop everything? I have to pay rent in a month. Okay, well, this is the magic, and this is the thing that happens. You're not going to think your way to a solution, so stop thinking that you will. The thinking is what's getting you in trouble. You're not going to think your way out of everything. Your power is when you are present. Your power is in the present moment. That is the point of power. You cannot be powerful when you're living in the future, and you cannot be powerful when you're dwelling on the past, you're powerful when you're here with your present awareness right now because you're in the moment that actually exists right now. Everything else is imaginary. So the rent example, okay, you may be thinking, well, how can I stop worrying about my rent if I need to pay my rent at the end of the month? You're not paying that rent right now. You don't need to worry about it right now. And that may jar with you, but let me tell you why. When you're in the present, the solution comes when you're constantly thinking about the event, the date, the worst case scenario, right? That is what you are just living in that. And you can't see a solution in that. Where are you going to find a solution if you're just thinking of worst case scenario? You cannot. But when you're in the present moment, you will see see the opportunities before you in the present, you will see the solutions that are available to you right in front of your fucking eyes if you just open them. We're like dream walking through this actual experience. We're sleepwalking through all the miracles that are right before us. Your best friend, you could walk out the door right now and you could be so lonely and you could be dwelling on the fact that you've no friends. You could literally, if you just opened your eyes and started going outside with your eyes open and a presence and an awareness to actually meet people and be present. Your best friend could be around the corner, could be your next door neighbor. You have no idea the miracles and the opportunities that are around you if you just actually started being present in your body and in your life. So when you start to do this and cultivate this, you will find the answers. An example. This has happened so many times for me in my life where I've gotten carried away with my thinking in the past or my thinking in the future. And I brought it back to the present and I just said, oh my God, it was all here, it was right under my nose. And it always has been and always will be. And anything else is just you. You're wasting your life. Unless you're visualizing a positive possibility for your future, which brings you excitement in the present moment, then the rumination is useless. Unless you're strategizing and planning for something that's exciting for you. The room, the rumination, all of this stressing, worrying, imagining is useless. I have an example of this from someone else. So let's say, for example, you're working a job and you hate it. And you really want it to change. And you're doing, like, hospitality, and you want this big, sexy, creative career, and every day you go to work and you're miserable, and you. You choose to just be dwelling on the fact that you took this job. You choose to be imagining in the future. I don't even know if things are gonna get better, and I'm not getting paid enough from this. And I'm so annoyed because this is the job that I wanted. And you're never actually in the moment in your job because you're too busy hating and being uncomfortable and wishing it was different. Well, instead, if you chose to come in and be present and make the most of it, you would get a different outcome, absolutely guaranteed. And I saw this happen where I live. I went for dinner with someone, and the person who was serving us, he had such a presence. He was so present. He was engaging with us. He was speaking with us. Such a positive energy. And he really spoke to us personally. He made friends with us. He went out of his way to serve us. If he was over there, he would notice. As soon as I was thirsty, my drink was poured. He was incredibly attentive, such a kind person. And it just so happened that him being present and him putting his best foot forward, even though this job was not what he wanted to do, the person I was with had the exact opportunity that he was looking for. And he got an opportunity that he really wanted. Why? Because he had presence. Because he made the most of the moment that he was in. And we all have that opportunity. We all just choose to waste it. Most of us, 99% of us, choose to waste every opportunity that passes us by. We can't even see it because we're so far gone. We let our minds and our egos take us miles away from what's happening right here and now. And all the signs, all the synchronicities, all the blessings, all the learnings, all the opportunities, they're right in front of you. You just have to interrupt your mind when something happens and your mind says, oh, well, this means that this ties back to this thing that happened before, which means I'm not good enough. Which means I won't be able to do this. No. Look at what's in front of you and take that. See the good in that. So when you open your eyes tomorrow morning and you start dwelling or you start worrying, remind yourself that there's. There's people out there whose eyes didn't open. They closed their eyes for the last time. They thought their eyes would open the next morning. But they didn't. Yours did. So fucking open them. Go out into the world and seize the day. Fucking go sing a song. Jump up and down. Tell someone you like them. Stop putting off awkward conversations. Stop putting off the things that call to your soul. This is your fucking life and no one's gonna make you live it. You have to open your eyes and decide to do that for yourself before it's too late. And that's all there is to it. Stop wasting time dwelling on things that don't serve you anymore. Stop wasting time worrying about things that probably aren't even gonna happen. Focus on what you can do right now. Focus on what you have in front of you right now. Stop wasting the opportunities that are before you. There are people who didn't open their eyes today, and you did. Stop wasting the opportunity that's in front of you. There are people who are in hospital who are begging for the opportunity that you have right now to be able to go and try again and do something new and live your fucking life. So stop wasting it.
