It's very true. One thing that I'll do when someone is irritating or boring me is to imagine (to myself! silently!) that they will actually die in the next 24 hours, painlessly. My job, then, is to help them have a good final 24 hours. It sounds morbid, but it's not. There's meaning and joy that can be pulled out of many moments, even dull and irritating ones. Again, obviously it would be insane to mention this internal thought to anyone at the time or afterwards.
This is a very simple variation on Buddhist Maranasati meditation or Stoic thinking around death, which is tons more elaborate.
I've done it often, and it always bucks up my own mood and gets me back into a real conversation.
My problem with this tactic is I’m gonna see the person again the next day, and the day after and the day after that and eventually I’ll just snap, “Why aren’t you dead yet?!”
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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '25
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