For all the fuss, the worrying, and the exhausting effort to control the world—you’ll die anyway.
For all the striving to be relevant, to be noticed, to make sure people know who you are and what you’ve accomplished—you’ll die anyway.
For all the arguments, the grudges, the drama, and the desperate need to prove you were right—you’ll die anyway.
Maybe that sounds dark, but I find something incredibly freeing about it.
Ernest Becker wrote in The Denial of Death that “the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.” His argument was that much of what we do—our striving, our need for significance, our desire to build something that outlives us—is tied to our awareness that one day we will die.
We spend so much of life trying to become somebody because somewhere beneath all the noise, we know that someday this somebody will disappear.
But what if instead of denying death, we allowed the certainty of it to teach us how to live?
If the death of this body is inevitable, why wait until then to die to the things that keep us from truly living?
Die to yourself now.
Die to the ego that needs recognition. Die to the fear that demands certainty. Die to the worry that pretends it can control tomorrow. Die to the resentment that keeps yesterday alive. Die to the need to be right.
Literally give up on the version of yourself you’ve spent a lifetime trying to protect.
Not your soul. Not your love. Not the person God created you to be.
Give up the false self—the one built from fear, pride, control, comparison, and the opinions of others.
Becker wrote, “Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.”
Maybe that is part of our struggle. We desperately want our small lives to mean something enormous. We chase recognition, accomplishment, money, titles, possessions, victories, and the approval of others, hoping somehow they will prove that our existence mattered.
But perhaps Jesus offered another way.
Not the enlargement of the self, but the surrender of it.
Not Look what I became.
But Lord, what can I give?
Not Remember my name.
But Let my life point toward Yours.
Maybe that is the strange freedom hidden inside our mortality: once we accept that we cannot preserve ourselves forever, we can stop spending our lives trying.
We can surrender.
Because in the end, none of us will stop what is coming. There will be a death, and I believe there will be a rebirth. Perhaps then we will finally see how little of what consumed us actually mattered.
Maybe Heaven will reveal what we could never fully understand here: that what we spent our lives searching for was already within reach.
Love.
Forgiveness.
Peace.
God.
So why wait for death to surrender?
Why spend another day defending an ego that eventually has to be left behind anyway?
Die to the fear.
Die to the resentment.
Die to the need for recognition.
Die to the illusion of control.
Die to yourself today—
and finally begin to live.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” — Luke 9:23
