THE FINAL REALIZATION

These historical figures, who once stood as the epitome of success and power, faced death with the realization that their achievements were ultimately meaningless. Most of the world’s most successful individuals have died with the feeling that they were the most unsuccessful people in the world. The truth is that if the insights that come to a person near death had come to them earlier, their lives would have been completely different. When a person stands on the edge of death, all the glories of the world seem more futile than a pile of ashes. In those final moments, they are often consumed by regret, unable to think about anything else. Behind them lies a world they have lost, and ahead is a world for which they have done nothing. There is no point in remembering death when it comes; the time to remember death is before it arrives. When a person is in a position of power, capable of oppressing others, and justifying their cruel actions, they are often unwilling to think about the consequences. At that time, they do everything they should not do to satisfy their ego. But when their strength diminishes, when their actions start to haunt them, and when they realize they are in the clutches of the merciless angel of death, that’s when they remember their mistakes. The time to remember, however, was when they were making those mistakes and refusing to heed any advice. Mao Zedong (1893–1976), after ruling over a great nation with nearly 800 million people for almost 30 years, finally departed from this world. In 1965, he told Edgar Snow during an interview, “A thousand years from now, all of us—even Marx, Engels, and Lenin—will look rather ridiculous.” Although he said this in the context of political and economic theories, perhaps death would reveal within just ten years that this statement holds true in another sense as well. What a person does before death to create their personality becomes completely meaningless in life after death. They suddenly realize that those things considered most important, and for which they dedicated their entire life, hold no value here. o When a person stands on the edge of death, all the glories of the world seem more futile than a pile of ashes. Behind them lies a world they have lost, and ahead is a world for which they have done nothing.