Death is often seen as an inhibitor, not as a motivator. The fear of death is what keeps us from acting recklessly and keeps us alive. For most of us, thinking of death triggers feelings of sadness, depression, and anxiety, but what are all of these feelings? These feelings are energy manifesting itself in the form of negative emotions! We can either channel energy into fear and anxiety, or we could convert it into a reason to live life fully.
Candy Chang while grieving came up with the idea of creating a space on an abandoned house in New Orleans where people could express what is was they wanted to do before they died. Candy would paint the walls in chalk board paint and spray paint “Before I die, I want to______” for people to complete. Chalk would be provided for anyone that wanted to participate and here are some of the responses people gave
What stood out to me was the overwhelming number of responses that involved with state of mind or were intangibles and had more to do with inner peace and less with materialistic things. The public art project served as a looking glass into peoples core values and people are good. In a world that is often callus and in a region that is notorious for poverty the responses included goals to love, be at peace, see others in better situations and being true to themselves. This gives me hope. It shows that while the main stream news outlets will now share a story like this, they are all too happy to share the dark sides of society people are kind and caring. Because of the raw emotions triggered I can’t help but love the dichotomy that exist between crippling negativity and the ability to push us to be our best selves while we still can.
As for me… Before I die, I want to be able to look back knowing that I positively as many people as I could while hurting the least amount of people along the way.