When it is time to go

In November, as the year draws slowly to an end and just before we start looking forward to Christmas, we are reminded that sooner or later everyone will have to leave this life. For those who in their life are motivated by the irresistible desire to appear important in the eyes of others this may be a daunting prospect.

Wealth, esteem and power may buy us the kind of love that will last for as long as our status holds- John Cassar White

This year, like in most years, the media that revels in promoting the cult of personalities reported extensively on the premature death of three high-profile personalities: Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs and Muammar Gaddafi. We live in a society that is obsessed with celebrities, especially politicians, for reasons that we often fail to understand. Some admire politicians for their capacity to work effectively and dispense patronage. Others love public figures who manage to achieve success in their fields as both Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs managed to do in their relatively short lives.

Yet, there is always another aspect to our lives. When we are in good health and at the peak of our powers, we are reluctant to ask ourselves whether people pay us compliments out of sincere affection for who we really are, or whether they are just searching for advantage. When our health starts to fail and death looms, our admirers suddenly disappear and we feel angry and betrayed. We wonder how we could be so seduced by fake admirers. As the social anthropologist Alain De Botton rightly remarks: The thought of death brings authenticity to social life.

Luckily, most of us never experience such brutal conditional love. Wealth, esteem and power may buy us the kind of love that will last for as long as our status holds. If we invest in genuine relationships that are built on love, authentic social relations and on charity these relationships will withstand the erosion of our status and we will feel less betrayed when the time comes for us to leave.

During this year some people, like me, lost dear members of their families – some of them in the prime of their life. Besides reminding us of our own inevitable mortality, the death of dear ones often humbles us as we reflect on how some people seem to tiptoe through life without ever getting a public acknowledgement for their disinterested commitment to their families and friends. We may even feel a secret sense of justice that ultimately everyone – whether a publicly admired personality or an ordinary private family person – will end up “as the most democratic of substances: dust”.

Some feel frustrated at being unimportant. We may even envy the rich, the beautiful, the famous and the powerful that seem to have it so good during their lives. But we can often shake of this negative feeling by recognising the relative unimportance of everyone. The enormity of the universe that surrounds us, the beauty of nature, the very concept of eternity renders us all so insignificant within the cosmos.

Such reflections should not increase our anxiety but rather bring about a sense of tranquillity as we understand our true significance in the order of things. The first time you feel anxious about your failure to realise your grandiose ambitions, try to imagine the relevance of your most important achievements for those who will be living in a hundred years time. This does not imply that we should adopt a laid back attitude in life on the pretext that as human beings we are so insignificant that we might as well let destiny take its course until the time comes for us to go.

The great successes that mankind has achieved over the centuries are a direct result of the vision, ambition and determination of millions of people who wanted to improve the way we live and be acknowledged for this. Some of them may have led quite miserable private lives, but their achievements have made the lives of the rest of us that much more comfortable and interesting.

The true challenge for all of us is to strike a balance between our efforts to achieve our ambitions, however significant or otherwise these may be for the rest of society, and our ability to achieve inner peace and happiness as individuals that are not eternal. Fortunately, the business world has its fair share of high achievers who are certainly not eternal but use the time given to them in this life for the benefit of the rest of society.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com