Do You Want to Know the Time of Your Passing?

In 2010, Gail Goodwin, after reading some works by Michael Bungay Stanier, began her blog with this heading: If You Could Know The Date of Your Death, Would You Want To Know?

Apparently Goodwin was caught off guard slightly by seeing that Stanier had predicted his own date of passing, down to the very day of September 15. She wondered, “How would knowing the date affect the quality of the days we have here to live”?

Curious, as good writers are, she turned to her blog readers asking for a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the same bulky question. While it was a small sampling, most responded with a yes answer.

Goodwin then modified the question: What if you knew you had ten years remaining; or one year; or six months? She reasoned that when you break a lifespan into more manageable moments, things begin to seem more real and “Insurmountable problems now seem insignificant.” And it is fairly well known that persons on their deathbeds tend to regret most the things they did not do.

In a 2024 USA Today analysis, it was determined that about one‑third of Americans “can’t even bear to think about death.”

A National Funeral Directors Association survey found that the Gen Z age group is the most likely generation to describe death-talk as “not healthy or normal.”

If these studies and surveys are mostly accurate, the results would help explain such Western cultural deficiencies as end‑of‑life planning avoidance, largely supported by multiple national surveys.

Experts will tell us that we don’t avoid knowing the date of our deaths because we fear death. Rather, we avoid it because of what the knowledge demands of us. It is the personal life-audit that we really want to avoid.

In looking ahead to our futures we would need to become more honest in who we are and in what we represent. We would need greater clarity. We would need to accept more responsibility for our missteps. More willingness to make difficult changes and, most important, to become more courageous.

Our ambiguity toward mortality is a self-protection approach; an effective one at that. Not knowing specifics will allow us to sustain the various illusions: “I’ll get to that later…”; “There’s still time….” What we might want to ask: How much of our lifetime is fantasy and does it honor our gift of life?

Following are some excerpts from the ‘No’ replies:

- “I would be stressed out knowing that my time is coming; It would be the ultimate deadline…”

- “Some things in life are not meant to be known until they happen… why would you want that stress?”

- “My life and all its entirety are in God’s will, therefore I would not like to know.”

- “No. Why spoil the surprise? Would you honestly rush to the last chapter of the book…?”

Tempus fugit: The shock of aging. The speed of change. The sense of life slipping away. The need to act before it is too late.