The Grasshopper keeps odd hours. I woke up in the middle of the night with this phrase in my head: “You may never know you’ve lived until you die.”

I had no clue what it meant, so I wrote it down and went back to sleep. When I woke up, there it was on my nightstand and I got to wondering.

My sense is that it’s more a message for the living than the dead. It seems more akin to the notion I have about knowing love. In romantic relationships, I don’t believe you can ever know love until you’ve had your heart broken. I don’t claim that my notion is true, but it feels that way.

I think you have to die a time or two to appreciate life. Again, not physical death, but parts of you dying. The old adage comes to mind that you can’t appreciate youth until you’re old.

When a part of us dies, it reminds us of what used to fill that void – something that we may not have truly appreciated when it was part of us.

This is not an exercise to lament what we’re missing; that will go on without our help. This is more about taking stock of what you’re truly grateful for in your life right now. You may not know.

What you may not know is what contributes to you feeling alive, until you do an inventory. It’s a simple, private process of taking a few, uninterrupted moments and writing down all the things you are grateful for. They will come in big and small packages and your list will be different than anyone else’s.

The purpose of doing this exercise is to discover the things that contribute to your aliveness and to feel appreciation for them while they are here, instead of regretting that you didn’t appreciate them should they move on.

This exercise is not designed to bring back the dead; it’s to recognize and appreciate what’s alive in your life and to celebrate it while it’s here.

There are tons of things to be grateful for, but if you don’t appreciate them until they die, you haven’t fully lived.

All the best,

John