Video transcript below:​​

​​​What if a bus hit you? Now I want you to actually think about that.

Now imagine I’m on my phone, I’m not paying attention, and some brand new Tesla speeding through the parking lot, isn’t paying attention, is looking the other way or whatever, and hits me and I’m gone.

I leave my child behind. I leave my family behind. I leave you guys behind, my followers, my friends. I just leave this world.

What would I do if I knew that was gonna happen? How can I respect that possibility? How can I respect the fact that unless technology comes through for us there will be a day in my future where I’m going to bite the dust.

Now think about it for yourself. What are you gonna do with the time you have right now? And whether you believe in the afterlife or not, it’s not gonna be the same as this life now.

And this life can be beautiful and amazing and you can do things to help other people and reduce the suffering that there is in this world today because there’s a lot of suffering, there’s a lot of injustice, and there’s a lot of opportunity to make it better. For yourself and for others. We all have something to contribute.

This concept of considering your death, the stoics use this, and I’m a big stoic philosophy proponent, follower, etc. I love the stoics. They call it negative visualization. You basically imagine the worse that can happen.

For example, you could literally imagine that you lose your son or your child or your wife or your husband, and you should literally visualize how you would feel about that. Now most people don’t want to do this because it can be painful.

What we figured out is through pain, through trial, through struggle, through things that are difficult, there’s gold. All that pressure, millions of years through carbon, creates diamond.

Without the pressure, without that environment and those forces, there’d be no diamond. Without pressure and forces in your life, you wouldn’t be grateful for anything.

You’d get your value in life thus far based on what you’ve gone through, and that’s why I sometimes pity people that have had singularly perfect lives because when that thing does happen, when their heart gets broken or they lose their job or they go broke or heaven forbid they’re attacked or victim or whatever, they’re not gonna be prepared to deal with it.

And so one way to prepare, to focus on how things could be worse so that you can move to a place of gratitude now. That’s the purpose.

The purpose isn’t to wallow in despair or to be depressed or anything like that. The purpose is to take, wow that could really happen, and it can. Every single day, millions of people die every single day.

It could happen to me. It could happen to people I care about. In fact, it’s going to. Every single person watching this video at some point in your life, someone you care about is going to die. Let it sink in for a moment. It’s true.

My dad’s side of the family’s passed away. I’ve lost my father. I’ve lost friends. And I try to celebrate their life. I try to celebrate their memory. And I try to honor by being now, being in the present, and doing great things.

Living my fullest potential. Not being complacent. I know I can do great things so I need to do it, I have to do it.

I can’t just sit here and watch Netflix every night. That’s easy. And save up money and just live a nice little comfortable life. I have that, but honestly, I’d rather have it all on the line.

I’d rather invest and build and live frugally for a long time because I’m going to be able to reach more people that way. And if ever there’s a big pay day at the end, that’s great. And if there isn’t, I still have this.

I still have YouTube. I still have Instagram. I still have ways to reach people. And I can interact with people in real life here in Texas and around the world.

There is always going to be an opportunity for those of who give your gifts to the world, there’s always going to be an opportunity.

When you give your gifts to the world, those gifts that help other people, that empower them, that lift them up, that bring them out of poverty, pain, suffering, you will always have a purpose and a profession.

And that is a prerequisite for human happiness is you must have purpose. You must belong.

So I want you right now to think about your death. The death of people you care about. What would your life look like?

In fact, I imagine what people would say at my funeral. I picture them sitting there with me in the casket. It’d be nice for them to say nice things, and I think they would.

But I know they would feel bad that I didn’t get to give more of my gifts to the world and do more of the things that I’ve planned to do and that I don’t get to spend more time with them.

It’s something we all need to do, and I think we get caught up in this short clicky, likey, short form, like all positive or funny or whatever, distraction based Internet world we live in. And the reality is we celebrate the death of famous people because that’s what the news talks about.

But what about the millions of people that are just daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, grandparents, what about them that die every single day? Yeah they get their funeral. Maybe someone posts about it on social media and people offer their sad face emojis and stuff.

But what are we doing about today? How are we letting the now be affected by things that don’t matter because we’re not paying attention to those things that actually matter?

How many times do we miss an opportunity to call someone we care about or spend time with them or say yes to spending time with friends or family even though we have a lot to do or we want to work or whatever.

And I know I struggle with that because I’ve got to balance spending time with the now with building my future and building a future for everyone and a future for a world that’s a better place.

That’s why you have to think about these things. That’s why you have to have these conversations with others and with yourself right?

Record a video like this for yourself if you need to, watch it back. Do that and leave a comment below, let me know. Let me know some thoughts, share your story.

Let me know how you feel doing this exercise or some examples in your life of how you’ve done this. Maybe you’ve been forced to do this as you’ve lost somebody and maybe how that loss has helped you in your life.

Every loss I’ve ever experienced has helped me in some way even though going through it is the worst thing ever and we never want it. We’d never wish it on anyone.

So leave a comment below. Like this just because I want more people to find it and hopefully do the same thing. These ideas and these practices, things like this, like philosophy, stoicism, negative visualization, or just thinking about death.

These are the things we need in our modern world to not be distracted by all the drama and the gossip and the news and the fear mongering and the BS that we have that sucks up so much of our attention and our energy.

So thanks for watching.

​Colin Stuckert Founder/CEO, Wild Foods

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