Came across this a little later than sooner. Brilliant post. →

Recently I read a story about the inventor Buckminster Fuller, who at age 32, despondent about business failures, contemplated suicide. He decided that instead of dying, he would live the remainder of his life as if he had died. I wonder if this sounds like a foreign concept to you, because it’s familiar to me. In 2002, I came home from the hospital to a house that felt like it belonged to a dead relative. I recognized the possessions as mine, at an intellectual level, but they seemed from some other person’s life, as I had recognized the things in my grandmother’s house after she died. These things are all familiar, but the person they belonged to is gone. 

After such a shift your priorities change. Before that, I cared a lot about what people thought of me. I still do, but there’s a twist. As I’m processing the insecure feeling that comes from disrespect, I remind myself that I’m gone, I’m dead — the person they’re dissing doesn’t exist. Of course they forgot about me, I’m dead. I know it must sound weird, but that’s where I’m at. If my Wikipedia page is wrong, well, no one is going to care after I’m gone, so ipso facto, no one cares.

Is ipso facto a real phrase? Have to look it up.

So how does one chart the course of a dead person?

The body has to do something every day. When a dead person wakes up in the morning, what’s the first thing on his to-do list?

And the ego isn’t really gone, but now it can be reasoned with.

Hard to write about, except on this one day. Because all there is to say is that I’m thankful for this day. I have no future and I don’t remember my past. This is all there is. Finally those words make sense, in the way a mathematic theorum makes sense. No matter which direction you approach it from you get to the same place.