If it were my last day...

2026 May 27, 4 AM

It is 4AM here in India, and I am sitting on my laptop thinking what to do that would be meaningful at the end of the day, at the end of the week, and maybe month.

I joined IBM Consulting on 24th Apr and it has been over a month and a couple of days. And that’s also how long I have been on the bench.

As I sit here with muddled thoughts and a bit of headache, I ask myself “What would I like to do, to see get done before my death?”

It is both a simple and a tough question:
Tough because it forces a person to ponder about his death.
And simple because death at the end of the day seems like “we know how we are going to go out”. In reality that’s not how it happens. Before seeing death, there is a very, very long period of reduced capacity, reduced capability and a declining health. That’s about 20-30 years in many cases.

So as a dying person, what do we deal with first: reduced capability, declining health, or final stop?

As a person who wants to practice “Uttam Kshama” (Supreme Forgiveness), I want to believe that the world spares the dying by letting them know that “S/he has done well, and s/he has done enough.”

~~~ Conclusion ~~~

The way forward from here is better described in some Buddhist (or Western, or otherwise) lessons and teachings:

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." — Matthew 6:34 (KJV)

"God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference." – Serenity Prayer

“If you can do something about it, why worry? If you cannot do anything about it, why worry?” — 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva in his text, the Bodhicaryavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life)

“Whatever happens, happens for a reason and happens for good.” — Bhagavad Gita