Microsoft Word who will cry when u die doc

63. 
Have a Living Funeral  
When I was doing research for The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, I came across the story of an Indian maharaja 
who would engage in a bizarre morning ritual: everyday, immediately after waking up, he would celebrate his 
own funeral, complete with music and flowers. All the while, he would chant, “I have lived fully, I have lived 
fully, I have lived fully.” 
When I first read this, I could not understand the purpose of this man’s ritual. So I asked my father for 
some guidance. His reply was this: “Son, what this maharaja is doing is connecting to his mortality every day of 
his life so he will live each day as if it were his last. His ritual is a very wise one and reminds him of the fact 
that time slips through our hands like grains of sand and the time to live life greatly is not tomorrow but today.” 
While on his deathbed, Plato was asked by a friend to summarize his great life’s work, The Dialogues. 
After much reflection, he replied in only two words: “Practice dying.” The ancient thinkers had a saying that 
captured the point Plato made in other terms: “Death ought to be right there before the eyes of those who are 
young just as much as before the eyes of those who are very old. Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if 
it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.” Having a living funeral 
will reconnect you to the fact that time is a priceless commodity and the best time to live a richer, wiser and 
more fulfilling life is now. 

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64. 
Stop Complaining 
and Start Living  
Stop complaining about having no time for yourself and get up an hour earlier. You have the option, why not 
exercise it? Stop complaining about not being able to exercise given all that is on your plate these days. If you 
sleep seven hours a night and work eight hours every day, you still have more than sixty – three hours of free 
time every week to do all the things you want to do. This amount to 252 hours every month and 3,024 hours 
every single year to spend on life’s pursuits. There has never been a more exciting time to be alive in the history 
of the world and you have the choice to seize the boundless possibilities that every day presents. 
If you are not as fulfilled or as happy or as prosperous or as peaceful as you know you could be, stop 
blaming your parents or the economy or your boss and take full responsibility for your circumstances. This will 
be the first step to a completely new way of looking at your life and the starting point of a better way to live. As 
George Bernard Shaw said, “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the 
circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” 
Make wiser choices about the thoughts you will allow to enter your mind, as well as the attitude you will 
bring to your days and the way you will spend the hours of your time. Stop complaining and start living. In the 
words of the poet Rudyard Kipling, “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of 
distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.” 

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