A daily practice of mortality: Reclaiming your definition of success
“When death finds you, may it find you alive. ”
By now you may have seen the story of Denise Prudhomme, a 60 year old woman who was found dead at her work cubicle. It was four days before anyone found her. There’s something about this story that’s deeply unsettling to me. I obviously don’t know Ms. Prudhomme, and I don’t know what her life or work was like, but I feel sad that she’s gone and that her last moments were spent under what I imagine were harsh fluorescent lights on a semi-deserted floor of a Wells Fargo office building.
People note the logistics of the situation. She came in on a Friday that led into the weekend, so that’s why it took four days for folks to find her, but nonetheless it feels like a somber symbol of the disregard corporate America often has for human life.
In much of U.S. culture, we shy away from the topic of death. It’s labeled as morbid and depressing. The reality, however, as Ms. Prudhomme’s story starkly reminds us, is that death will come for us all. That being the case, instead of shunning the topic, how can we reflect on death in a way that clarifies what it means to live a life well lived? I appreciate how Alua Arthur, death doula and author of “Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End,” articulates it:
“A daily practice of being with mortality gives us the glorious opportunity to refine our priorities, redefine our values, and bring wonder and mystery to this wild ride of our unique lives. This allows us to reach the end downright, raggedy, satiated, and drunk on life—but ready to go home cause the party is over and our feet hurt.”
Working as a product manager in tech, I understand how easy it is to get lost in the grind of the day to day. User and market research, copious conversations with teams and stakeholders, managing product delivery, and any number of a long list of activities and responsibilities. It’s also easy to let our stress escalate when for many of us, it’s not that serious. I’m not saying this statement to disparage anyone’s work in the tech industry, but for many of us the work we’re doing is not literally life and death. And if we died while working, not a week would go by before a job posting was opened to fill our role.
In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bonnie Ware shares wisdom and reflections from her time working with those near death in palliative care. The two regrets that stand out to me in relation to tech professionals are:
I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
As Arthur states in the quote above, how can we embrace “a daily practice of being with mortality”? Perhaps it starts with reflecting on our own potential regrets; maybe the two regrets above resonate for you. What makes your heart ache when you consider not having the opportunity to experience it before you die? While it may be uncomfortable to think about, death can bring great clarity in illuminating what matters most to us. For some of us, when we reflect on what a life well lived is and what regrets we may have, what we are doing now may just be a small part of the bigger picture.
I’m not going to do mental gymnastics to tie death to how you advance in your tech career. That would be ridiculous, and I’ve never been the “climb the ladder” type of person. What I want to offer instead, is that as a tech professional, it’s okay if your job is just a job for you. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about doing it well, but you just have a different relationship to your work. It’s also okay if your job is tied to a deeper meaning for you. I hope it’s not that your self-worth is tied to it, but perhaps you deeply believe in the problems you’re solving or the community you’re serving or the work feels energizing for you. I want to free us from the rigid notion of success. Success is deeply personal and rooted in an individual’s values, desires, needs, temperament, culture and context. You get to decide what success in your career looks like.
Maybe it’s staying true to your values at your workplace. Maybe it’s being a mentor to others. Maybe it’s maximizing your brilliance and potential in solving problems. Maybe it’s becoming an executive leader. Maybe it’s having a good job that allows you to provide for your family, spend time with them and be generous. Maybe this job is just a jumping point to something altogether different that matters more to you. Reclaim your vision of success if it currently doesn’t resonate for you.
I’ll end with the words from two poets. Ocean Vuong said that death “...was the closest thing I saw to truth.” If that is the case, I offer you this question from the late Mary Oliver:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”