Last Day on Earth

A holiday rumination on childhood daydreams and human connection.

How do you find the holiday season? With online threads deserted, and friends too busy to return texts, are hours hollowed out, leaving you in your own solitary echo chamber of discontent? Do you also find, conversely but not incompatibly, that forced festivities seem too crowded? There may be a dearth of the people you want to be around, but an excess of people you’d rather not have to deal with. You might find too many people honking at each other in traffic, in line for salted caramel lattes, or elbowing each other at doorbuster sales. There may be people you don’t really want to talk with crowding around the extended family tables, but etiquette prescribes against AirPods as an accessory for holiday dinners. It’s all too much, and yet not enough. A cardboard feast. Another year of caustic headlines draws to a close.

It's easy to yearn for free reign over your own dominion of solace. Maybe in childhood, or even adulthood, your mind has wandered to the thought… What if I were the last person on earth? Visions of unlimited license may have come into your free-ranging imagination—covering both hands with Ring Pops, taking over the luxury suite at the most extravagant hotel in town, tearing through city streets in a F1 car, sitting on medieval thrones in art museums, letting all the animals out of their cages at the zoo… and that was fun, until it wasn’t. Most likely, even the You of your imagination became lonely, and your daydream soon turned to finding other survivors, maybe even that one person you had a crush on back in science class, now all grown up and ready to form a new civilization with you, adorned with Tiffany bracelets and accompanied by a majestic, tame tiger from said zoo. You find your tribe, you battle or reconcile with other tribes, and your Last Person on Earth scenario has turned into post-apocalyptic YA sci-fi fantasy. Then the bell rings and you missed what the homework was going to be because your mind was walking with a tiger.

Let’s leave that there, because I want to talk about another scenario: not, What If I Were The Only Person Left on Earth, but What If This Were My Last Day on Earth? It’s a frequent platitude brought up in motivational seminars. I’ve always had a problem with it, and it’s likely that you have, too. We can’t realistically live each day as though it were our last. If you knew that tomorrow a meteor were going to hit the planet, maybe you would tell off your annoying roommate, quit your boring job and fly to wherever, and for good measure forget your carb count and macros and eat a bacon blue cheese burger for breakfast washed down with a milkshake. Fine. But put that on repeat every day and you are very soon broke and unhealthy with your antagonized roommate smirking as you are evicted from the apartment. It’s not sustainable, because chances are there is no imminent meteor cataclysm, nor are you on death row planning your last meal; you are someone enmeshed in society, with work and obligations and friends and family you are connected to. Living each day as though it were your last doesn’t make sense.

Living mindful of the inevitable finitude of human life, however, can be powerful. From the memento mori whispered into the ears of mighty Roman generals to the oft-quoted commencement address of Steve Jobs, a reminder of life’s necessary time limit can change the fabric of our lives. Jobs came across the ‘live each day as if it were your last’ injunction when he was seventeen and integrated that idea into his daily practice:

I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been “No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

The ‘too many days in a row’ is the careful qualification that made the question useful to him. Instead of living as though any given day is the last day of his life, he observed the substance of his daily life and contemplated, and then did this again, The ‘too many days in a row’ is unspecified, left open for both young Jobs and the Stanford students listening to his 2005 speech. It relies on one’s inner compass to determine what is the count of ‘too many days’ of a living life that is not satisfying. The timeframe for change is also unspecified. Much is left to self-analysis and self-directed change.

The Jobs model takes the ‘live as though it’s your last day on earth’ dictate and shifts it into something more practical and useful, a simple tool for checking in each day and a commitment to make changes to get the course of your life aligned with what you want. However, many people don’t know what they want, or don’t know how to course-correct, or feel there are real impediments to following their bliss, even if they did see a big sign with an arrow saying “Bliss Thataway!” There is also nothing ethical in the Jobs practice. It could work for Hitler or a serial killer if they muster the discipline and focus.

Twenty years on from that seminal Stanford speech by the late giant of the tech world, the recommendations are worth re-evaluating, not merely for lack of an ethical core, but because of the changed world. “If you don’t like it, change it!” has a whiff of a fatuous and facile assertion from the generation who had prosperity handed to them on a plate to those who learn and work and scrape and still have affordable housing so insanely out of reach it seems an impossibility; and no, giving up avocado toast will not make up the gap. So, if the Y2K motivating speech falls flat, and we feel powerless to get our goals within grasp just by moving on from things that we don’t vibe with, then what?

What if it’s not the things you do—your job, getting groceries, finding a parking place—that define your life, but the way you do things? What if you invest whatever you do with your own style, with joy, with love and gratitude for the goodness that can be found in any little ordinary task? What if you focus on what you can contribute rather than what you can get? What if you look in the mirror each day as Steve Jobs did and ask instead, “How can I thoroughly enjoy this day as me, as I am? How can I shine my light to bring some joy to others with this ordinary day, just as it is?”

Here’s a story from small town America. Once upon a time, before red and blue states had been color-coded, there was a man who went into a diner. A woman came in with a small child, maybe six years old. They were new in town and it was the child’s birthday. The woman, a single mother, had invited six children from the school to the child’s birthday party. Two had RSVP’d and the woman had reassured the anxious child that there would be more party favors to go around this way, and the three kids could have a great time. Those two kids never showed up. The mother, living on slender means, took the heartbroken child to the diner and ordered one slice of cake, a cuppa joe and a glass of milk. The man heard everything from the earnest conversation.

When it came time to pay the bill, the server told the mother that the man had paid for the cake, coffee and milk for the lonely birthday celebration. That changed everything for the kid, because even though no one had shown up to the birthday party, someone cared. It felt like there were angels on earth. The woman turned to thank the man, but he was already out the door and gone. He didn’t want thanks, he just did something kind for strangers in town, strangers who didn't look or sound like his townsfolk but who were having a very human moment of trying to keep chins up on a tough day.

Maybe you don’t need to found a major tech company or plot out an ambitious life direction to create meaning. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to give or get the perfect gift, wrapped up with a trending aesthetic to have a worthwhile holiday. Maybe you just need to look in the mirror, see what is good in you, and share that with the world. Or just buy a coffee for a stranger in a diner or for your annoying roommate without expecting thanks, and be grateful that you’re not the last human on earth. In this life you have been given, what brings you comfort and joy? Are you open to the idea that it might be an inside job? What if our inalienable rights were inscribed as life, liberty and the sharing of happiness? Just a thought. Here’s wishing you and those you cross paths with all the best now and in the year ahead.

"When it comes time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived." - Henry David Thoreau