The shirt you die in might already be the one you put on this morning without thinking about it. You reached into the closet and took one down: maybe your favorite, maybe the first clean one you found, maybe something you’d stopped noticing you even own. Loving it, hating it, not thinking about it at all, none of that was ever going to change what it is.
That’s the part that doesn’t sit right once you look at it straight on. Not that you’ll die. Everyone already knows that. It’s that the marker for it might already be decided, already sitting in your closet right now, with nothing left to happen before it counts. Whatever time you think you still have to get around to things, some of it might already be spent, and you have no way of knowing how much.
Most people run their lives on an assumption they never examine: there will be time later to start actually living. Later, once you catch your breath. Once the promotion comes through. Nobody says this out loud, because it doesn’t need saying. It’s load-bearing. Everything else gets built on top of it.
But this isn’t a piece about death, and it isn’t an argument for living like today is your last day. That’s advice, and advice assumes you’re one decision away from living differently. What’s actually happening is quieter than that, and harder to see from the inside. You haven’t closed something that already ended: the favor you keep doing long after the person stopped needing it, the plan you’re still funding even though you stopped believing in it. It looks like loyalty, or responsibility, or just not being ready yet. It isn’t an accident and it isn’t weakness. It’s a strategy. What already happened, you know the shape of. What comes after you close it, you don’t, and staying half-in costs you plenty, but at least it’s a cost you already understand.
That’s what living for yesterday actually looks like: a refusal to close something, because closing it means stepping into a version of today you can’t predict. It costs you exactly what you’d expect, and not someday, far off. This morning. While you were reaching for that shirt, part of you was still holding on to the thing you haven’t closed, and there wasn’t enough of you left in the room to be present for any of it. It wasn’t going to wait for you to close it. It happened either way.
The shirt doesn’t know what it means to you. It’s just fabric, doing its one job whether you loved it or forgot you owned it.
You do the same thing with your days: sort them into the ones that count and the ones that don’t, as if that sorting has any bearing on which one turns out to be the last. The thing you’re still holding onto isn’t real anymore. This morning is.
Want the Experiment-Driven Agile Retrospective Toolkit?
If you’d like the Toolkit, reach out and I’ll send details (what’s included, pricing, and how teams use it). Or subscribe for new posts and updates.