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May 20, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:18
Living Richly
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I'd like you to sort of think about your life, and I'd like you to sort of fast forward, right?
Just scroll forward all the way to the end of it, right?
We're all living biological-based organisms.
Forget for a moment whether there's life after death, whether there's God, whether you float up into the arms of Jesus, on the wings of the angels, anything.
Forget about that, if you don't mind, just for the moment.
And let's just say that the end of your life is not going to be a pleasant and look-forward-to kind of experience.
So I'd like to just sort of fast-forward you to the end and give you a sort of mental exercise to help you maybe appreciate even more the kind of stuff that you have in your life right now.
So let's just go on that white train to the end of life, and you're in a hospital bed, and you were rushed there in some manner or for some reason, and you are now being told by your doctor that pretty much this is a one-way hospital bed, right?
Basically, it's a hospital bed.
It's going to open up, drop you into the grave, and they're going to throw dirt in your face, cover you up, and you will live only on in memories of people, photos, and I guess maybe the odd videocast.
So, you've just been told, and you know statistically what it's going to be.
Even if you take care of yourself, it's going to be cancer, it's going to be a heart disease, or something like that.
Something is going to put you in that situation where you realize that you're not getting back out of this one.
This is kind of it.
Now, I just want you to sort of think about that for a moment, if you don't mind.
Just think about that.
Now, I'm 39 years old, so, you know, with any luck, I'm a little shy of halfway through my life.
And I'm not sure how old you are, assuming you're not already on your deathbed, then this will still be of relevance to you.
Now, I want you to think about, if you don't mind, think about what it's going to be like.
When you're 85 years old, 95, however old it's going to be, when it's going to happen, we know it's going to happen, we don't know when.
Think about how you would feel if somebody gave you the option or the possibility to go back in time 40 years.
So you're 85 years old, let's say.
For me it would be, let's say I die at 85, somebody's going to say to me, Steph, for a certain amount of money, I'm going to give you the chance to go back 46 years to be 39 again.
Now, can you imagine what an incredible thing that would be?
What an incredible offer that would be at the end of your life?
To be offered to be returned to health and vitality and youth and with all the decades and possibilities ahead of you.
Can you imagine what an incredible, exciting, mind-blowingly generous gift that would be?
Can you think?
If there's anything that you wouldn't give, that you wouldn't give to get those four or five or six decades back and have the ultimate do-over in your life, I would give anything, because you're facing the black wall, the drop-off, the fiery waterfall into nothing of death, to be given the opportunity to come back in time.
To where you are right now would be the most incredible gift.
And what would you not give for that?
I would give anything.
Arms, eyesight, two kidneys, I'll stay in a dialysis machine, I'll have a colostomy, whatever.
Doesn't matter to me because I'll be alive rather than dead.
Now, I'm not sort of saying this to sort of freak you out about your own mortality, though it's not a bad thing to think about from time to time.
It helps make being alive sort of more rich, more wonderful.
But...
Let's just say that we're the same age.
I'm 39 years old, as I mentioned.
Now, what would be the most incredible gift at the end of my life would be to come back to where I am right now with youth and health and vitality and fitness and possibilities and all of these wonderful things.
That would be the most incredible gift that someone could give to me at the end of my life.
And it would be the same thing for you as well.
It would be the most incredible gift that anyone could give you at the end of your life.
To come back to where you are right now.
Now, this is sort of what I'm trying to get at here.
This thing that would be the most incredible gift for you to get in the future.
That you would give anything to receive while hanging on the thin thread of life over the chasm of death.
What would be the most incredible gift?
What you would weep with joy to have a chance to receive even for one day, let alone for the next four or five decades, this thing called youth and health, possibility.
You already have it right now.
What would be the most incredible gift at the end of your life?
You are living every day of your life right now.
Because at the end of your life, you're going to get that.
Sit down from the doctor, and you're going to hear those fateful words, with any luck, right?
Hoping you're not in some terrible accident tomorrow.
But you're going to get those fateful words from the doctor, and the doctor's going to sit down, very nice and gentle, and say, you know, all we can do right now is to make you as comfortable as possible.
I think about this, actually, sometimes when I see an ambulance going past.
I think, I mean, not always, but sometimes I can't help but think that one day that ambulance is going to be for me.
And one day that ambulance is going to be for you.
And it's a one-way trip, right?
Your TV's going to be left on, your dinner's going to be half uneaten, and you're not coming back to clean up.
That's going to be for your next of kin or whoever.
But one day, that ambulance is going to come from us.
It's going to come from us, and we're not going to come back.
It's a one-way trip.
Because it's all a one-way trip to the grave for us living beings, right?
That's why we envy rocks from tongue to tongue.
Or animals that don't have a strong sense of their own mortality.
So, I'd just sort of like to say to you that...
What would be an incredible gift for you later on in life to be able to come back and be where you are right now, even if you're 70, even if you're 84, to get another year of life when you're hanging on the edge of death would be...
I mean, you couldn't ask for anything more.
But what would be such an incredible gift in the future is already available to you right now in the present.
You're living the most incredible gift that any human being can have, which is life and vitality.
So that's sort of the first thing that I would say that is a way of really appreciating and enjoying what you have right now.
Understanding that if you were to be given it in the future, it would be the most amazing, unbelievable gift.
And that we should really, really try and appreciate it every day of our life.
And when you die, you turn to dust, you don't get to feel the breeze.
You don't get to climb stairs.
You don't get to go to the gym or see a movie or make love to your wife or to your husband.
You don't get any of those things.
You don't care because you're gone.
I'm just talking about the time before while you're still conscious of what you could have if somebody gave you the life that you have right now.
So I'm just trying to say, really, really try and appreciate the life that you have right now.
So that's sort of the first way of approaching it.
Now, the second way of looking at something like this.
To make it a little bit less like, you know, five, six decades in the future maybe.
Another way of looking at this that can be quite powerful is, you know, you go for a checkup to your doctor and he gives you a call back the next week or whatever up here in Canada.
It's like six months.
So he gives you a call back and he says, oh boy, Steph, I am so sorry to have to tell you this.
My friend, you have leukemia.
And you really are not going to have much luck.
There's no treatment for it.
There's no possibility of bypassing this.
You are out of luck.
Okay, well, I mean, imagine if put that into the wood chipper of your mental processes and let that blend through for a little bit, what's going to fall out?
Just imagine that you get that call, you get that diagnosis, and you have not decades, not years, not even months, but weeks to live.
What is that going to do?
To your thinking about how you're spending your time.
What is that going to have you do regarding what you thought that you spent, how you spent your time last night or last week or last month?
Or how you're going to spend your time tomorrow or the day after?
I'm not saying that you've got to live like every day is your last.
That's a cliche and it's not very possible and neither would it be as sensible to do that.
But what I am saying is that...
It is a gift, right?
I mean, every day that we have a life and that we're healthy is a gift.
And yes, we all get migraines, we stub our toes and this and that.
So I'm not saying that, you know, you live on this perfect cloud, lying magic carpet all the time.
But when you start to look at the stressors in your life and the problems in your life and what it is that people are making your life difficult, problems at work and this and that and the other, you know, there is a larger perspective that I'm sort of trying to communicate to you with these mental exercises that can really help you appreciate and love.
Much more the time that you have and the richness that you have, the youth, the vitality, the health, the energy, all of this sort of stuff that you have.
Now, you get this diagnosis, and you live with it for a night, and you live with it for a day, and you live with it for another night, and you're sort of planning your funeral, you're looking at your kids, realizing everything that you're not going to see around them, everything that's to do with your life, you are really re-examining in a way that's completely different from anything which came before.
Well...
Now, imagine the following situation.
That your doctor phones you up the next day and says, Oh my God, I can't believe this.
I don't even know what to say.
Please don't sue me.
But there's another guy with your exact same name.
The files got mixed up.
He's the one who's dying.
You're perfectly healthy.
I mean, just imagine that.
Imagine that.
Imagine what that would do to your appreciation of everything that you have.
Right now.
And everything that's to come.
Everything that you have right now.
Imagine what that news, that false diagnosis of imminent death would do to your appreciation when that sentence was lifted.
Wouldn't that be the most incredible thing?
Wouldn't you wake up and hug everybody and just feel overjoyed at living?
And yes, that will fade.
They say it's about two months and so on.
But there's ways of keeping it alive for yourself.
There's ways of keeping that appreciation alive for yourself that are quite powerful.
So just try that as a mental exercise.
You're going to die, the reprieve comes, and you are allowed to live again.
How much would you enjoy the feel of sunlight on your face?
How much would you enjoy the little things?
How much would you be subject to all the little days' irritations and grumblings and mental distractions and road rages and this and that?
It's not going to make your life perfect.
It's not like you're going to saunter off into the sunset on a cloud of lithium pleasure, but it is going to mean that You can appreciate what you have just that little bit more, and really that's a very powerful thing to do.
Alright, number three.
Number three is to look at it this way.
Imagine that you get the news, you get the phone call which says, this is officer so-and-so, I regret to inform you that your wife has been involved in a fatal car crash, or your husband has been involved, or your child, your mommy, your dad, whoever it is that you really love.
Imagine how that would hit you.
Imagine what a split that is going to be in your life.
Imagine you think your life's gone one way, bam, out of nowhere, right?
Life is a constant series of sudden sights, right?
I mean, death is omnipresent.
Your life just takes a complete turn, and everything that you treasure about that relationship is now gone, never to return.
And you live with that for an hour.
I'm not going to give you some dramatic scenario where you go down to identify the body and it's a fat trucker named Bert or something.
We'll just talk about it.
You get another phone call where it's like mistaken identity.
Your wife lent her wallet to this person who died and blah blah.
She's fine.
I mean, what a...
I mean, what an incredible relief that would be for you.
I mean, to know that you face this future without the person in your life that you love the most, without your central core relationship.
To see that black hole that was going to be your future, that black chasm of loss and loneliness and missing somebody with your whole being, then to find out that they were alive and that was not going to be your future.
Wouldn't that be the most incredible thing?
Wouldn't that be the most amazing thing?
Wouldn't you just want to run into that person's eyes and tell them everything?
Or maybe you tell them everything already, but wouldn't you just appreciate that person in a way that would be so hard to imagine?
Because, I mean, all of these things are possible.
We all know people who've had this occur to them, or at least we've read about it.
These things are all possible, and they're all inevitable.
Everybody we love, we're going to lose.
Everybody who loves us is going to lose us.
We are going to lose ourselves.
We're going to lose the world.
The world is going to end for us.
So, what does that mean relative to having all of these things that you have right now?
Imagine that you lost everything.
You lost your job.
You lost your house.
You lost your family.
You lost whatever.
You had some terrible occurrence.
And then you got them all back.
How would you feel?
How would you feel about having those things back in your life?
How do you feel now?
Maybe thinking about bouncing forward to the future and sending out a sonar like a bat or a submarine or something.
Sending out sonar for the future.
Having it bounce back to see how much you would give at the end of your life to be right back where you are right now.
And if all the possibilities and all the health and the vitality, the energy ahead of you.
But that's what we should enjoy.
That's what we should take as an incredible gift every day.
In my mind, if you don't mind me saying so.
I'm trying to talk about personal liberty here, personal happiness.
Yeah, we got problems with the government.
Yeah, we got problems with this, that and the other.
But what we do have right now is the greatest gift, what we would give anything to, to have back at the end of our lives.
And that's really a very powerful thought or imagination process to go through.
And that's sort of what I would like to share with you as a way that helped me really become more...
really helped me live more richly and more deeply and with a greater appreciation of the days that we have because, I mean, they're going to end, right?
I mean, they're absolutely going to end one day.
The people we love are going to slide off into the night of death.
We are going to slide after them.
And there's going to be some period of time, very likely quite a considerable period of time, weeks, months, or years, We know that it's going to end.
We know that our life is going to end.
What would we give to be back where we are right now?
What would we give to be back where we are with all the possibilities and the health that we have right now?
We would give anything.
Anything.
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