(Or: How Almost Dying on a Plane Became the Best Life Coaching Session I Never Booked)
✈️The plane lurched violently upward.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re making an emergency climb due to traffic in our flight path.”
Which is a very polite way of saying: there is a plane where there absolutely should not be a plane, and we are leaving immediately.
The captain’s voice was calm. The g‑forces pressing passengers into their seats suggested otherwise.
As turbulence rattled the cabin, most people gripped armrests or exchanged wide‑eyed looks. One passenger did something else entirely. He focused on his breath, deliberately slowing his heart rate, seeing how calm he could get under pressure.
In for four.
Hold for four.
Out for four.
Hold for four.
Hold for four.
Out for four.
Hold for four.
Like a psychopath.
And then the question arrived — not philosophically, not gently, but viscerally:
Is he ready?
His grandfather used to say, “Make sure your bags are packed.”
Not literally. Spiritually. Emotionally. Relationally. It was shorthand for a far more uncomfortable question: Could you leave this life without regrets, without unfinished business, without words left unsaid?
So somewhere above the clouds on Flight 447 to Orlando, he did a quiet inventory.
Was he good with his people?
The answer surprised him.
Despite the striving. Despite the achievement‑chasing, the productivity‑optimizing, the constant belief that the next milestone would finally bring a sense of arrival — the answer was yes.
He had loved people well. He had shown up with warmth and humor. He had added something good to the lives he’d touched. The world was, in some small but real way, better because he’d been here.
It wasn’t the answer he expected.
But it was grounding.
A few minutes later, the plane leveled out. Thirty minutes after that, it landed safely in Orlando.
But something had shifted.
Death Is an Excellent Bullshit Detector
After that flight, everything felt clearer.
Emails that once hijacked his nervous system lost their power. “Urgent” meetings revealed themselves as aggressively optional. Workplace drama shrank to its proper size.
Death, it turns out, is an excellent bullshit detector.
Most people avoid thinking about it. But the ancient Stoics had a phrase for exactly this practice: memento mori — remember you will die. It sounds grim until it does its real job, which is clarification.
When someone truly remembers that time is finite, fake urgency collapses. Performative success loses its shine. What matters becomes obvious — and it’s almost never what the calendar is screaming about.
Death isn’t the enemy.
It’s the life coach no one wants to hire and everyone desperately needs.
From Outrunning Death to Dancing With It
Most people spend their lives trying to outrun death.
They chase achievements, build identities, accumulate credentials, and call it ambition — when often it’s just a long, elaborate attempt to prove they matter enough to be exempt from the rules of biology.
Psychologist Ernest Becker called these “immortality projects.” The ways people try to ensure they’ll live on — through legacy, reputation, or remembered success.
For him, it had once been grades, degrees, and professional status. For others, it might be company valuations, bestsellers, or perfectly curated family photos that get hundreds of likes and very little presence.
The uncomfortable truth?
None of it works.
And here’s the irony: the moment someone stops trying to outrun death, life doesn’t get smaller. It gets sharper. More vivid. More honest.
When mortality is no longer the enemy, life stops being a performance and starts becoming a practice.
The 90‑Year‑Old Test (Future Selves Are Ruthless)
There’s a simple exercise he often returns to.
Picture being 90 years old. It’s a Tuesday. There’s a porch involved — because apparently all imagined 90‑year‑olds have porches. What’s true about the best version of that moment?
The list is almost embarrassingly simple:
- Health enough to move and remain independent
- People nearby who are genuinely loved
- Enough clarity and capacity to serve, teach, or contribute
That’s it.
No job titles.
No bank balances.
No social proof.
No inbox zero.
No bank balances.
No social proof.
No inbox zero.
Ninety‑year‑olds do not care about LinkedIn headlines.
They care about presence.
They care about love.
They care about whether life was actually lived instead of postponed.
They care about love.
They care about whether life was actually lived instead of postponed.
Practical Memento Mori (For People With Calendars)
If death is going to be a mentor, it helps to let it coach without spiraling into existential dread.
Write the Eulogy — Twice
One version for today. One for a life lived aligned with what actually matters. The gap between them is the work.
One version for today. One for a life lived aligned with what actually matters. The gap between them is the work.
Use the Deathbed Filter
Before major decisions, ask: On my deathbed, will I regret not doing this — or regret what I sacrificed to do it?
Before major decisions, ask: On my deathbed, will I regret not doing this — or regret what I sacrificed to do it?
Seek Awe Intentionally
Stars. Oceans. Mountains. Anything that reminds the nervous system it’s part of something larger. Problems tend to shrink to their correct size.
Stars. Oceans. Mountains. Anything that reminds the nervous system it’s part of something larger. Problems tend to shrink to their correct size.
When Mortality Becomes a Productivity System
This isn’t about doing more.
It’s about doing what matters.
When someone truly internalizes that time is limited:
- Hard conversations stop being postponed
- Draining commitments get deleted
- Trivial systems stop being optimized
- Shared meals start being treated like sacred rituals
After that flight, responses got shorter. Conflicts got quieter. Peace became more valuable than being right.
Because from the perspective of mortality, most things simply aren’t worth the energy they demand.
Mortality as Mentor
He thinks often of his Uncle Ward — kind, gentle, generous. Even as illness took his body, Ward still showed up with care, attention, and love. Sometimes through words. Sometimes through presence alone.
Ward doesn’t get to do that anymore.
But others do.
That’s the paradox of memento mori: the more death is remembered, the more fully life is lived.
So the question that surfaced on that turbulent flight remains useful:
Are you ready? Are you good with your people? Have you said what needs saying, loved who needs loving, done what needs doing?
If not — what are you waiting for?
Death is always waiting to clarify what matters.
All that’s required is listening.
Marc D Malamud
Transitioning Doula
