He wrote his own funeral songs

He wrote three songs for his own funeral, and in them he described who would cry.

Almost nobody does that. The subject gets avoided so thoroughly that when a funeral comes, a script gets borrowed and read badly.

Tao Yuanming, who spent his life in and out of minor official posts, wrote his own. He describes the burial plainly. The horses neigh, the wind is cold, the grave is dug out in the open field. Then the line that stays with you. Relatives may have some sorrow left. Other people are already singing.

He isn't being bitter. He's noticing something you know and rarely say. Grief has a length, and most of the people at your funeral will be back at work by Thursday.

Then the last of it. What is there to say about death. You hand your body back to the hills.

He wrote that in his sixties, in poor health, entirely calmly. This isn't detachment. This is a man who put himself inside the ending and looked back from there.

And from there the list of what's urgent changes. The email isn't urgent. The apology you've been saving for the right moment is.

Say the thing while the person is still in the room. Not a grand speech. One sentence, today.

MOJOWAY is where I start from the end and work backwards. Self-awareness includes knowing what you'd want said, and then not waiting for the eulogy.