If You Were Gone Tomorrow, What Would People Remember About You?
99% of People Die With Regret -- Will You?
Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,
My father’s getting old now…
I think about the catastrophic mess he’ll leave me to clean up.
Not the unpaid bills, the legal nightmares, the tangled wreckage of a life poorly lived—but the damage that can’t be measured in dollars.
I think about his legacy of violence and abuse…
What the people closest to him will remember him for.
I see my sister’s ruined life, and you can’t convince me he had nothing to do with it.
My ongoing therapy bills?
A testament to his legacy.
Most people don’t like to think about these things. They push them aside, pretend there’s more time, more chances to fix the mess they’ve made.
But take a moment and ask yourself—if you were gone tomorrow, what would people remember about you?
And I mean really remember. Not the polite words they’d say at your funeral. Not the generic obituary.
But the truth.
The things they’d whisper behind closed doors.
The things they’d say when the priest wasn’t listening.
Would they say good things?
Don’t fucking lie.
There’s no point in blowing smoke up your own ass.
No point in hiding from yourself.
Because if you can’t face the answer to that question, you’re already dead.
How You Die Shapes How You’re Remembered
It’s a brutal truth—death rewrites everything.
Some people are remembered only for how they died.
Gabby Petito? She was a whole person before her murder. But her name is now forever linked to violence and tragedy.
Robin Williams? Same thing.
Your last moment has the power to erase a lifetime of effort… or redeem it.
The People No One Mourns
There are some people whose death feels like a relief to everyone who knew them.
You know the type.
The parents who left nothing but pain behind.
The bullies who never outgrew their cruelty.
The manipulators, the cowards, the ones who went through life taking and never giving.
Those types of people tend to be full of shit.
They absolutely refuse to see that they represent negativity and pain.
In life, they keep telling themselves they’re great.
Like the emperor with no clothes.
But their funeral is quiet. No one really cries. There’s a sigh of relief—like the world just exhaled.
You don’t want to be that person.
But what’s even worse?
Being forgotten entirely.
Living such a lukewarm life that you vanish without a trace.
No impact. No mark. No legacy.
Just a handful of people half-heartedly reminiscing before moving on.
As if you were never here at all.
The people you leave behind will tell your story.
And the truth is…
You don’t get to correct them.
So what story are they going to tell?
Will they remember your presence?
Or will they remember you always being too busy?
Will they remember your strength?
Or your excuses?
Will they remember your grit?
Or giving up before the fight even began?
Will they feel your absence?
Or will they move on lickety split?
Like you were never here…
Most people waste their time.
They waste their chances to change.
They assume they’ll get one more year. One more decade.
But you don’t know that.
👉 You could be hit by a bus tomorrow.
👉 You could die in a plane crash .
👉 A deadly car crash.
👉 From stage four cancer.
👉 From a senseless act of violence.
👉 A crime of opportunity.
👉 Or from an act of God.
It’s going to happen sooner or later.
Time waits for no man.
No One Gets Out Alive
Every life ends in tragedy.
Every death is violent.
And when you go, all that’s left are the choices you made.
Not the money.
Not the house.
Not the bullshit titles you collected like trophies.
Just who you were.
So ask yourself—if you were gone tomorrow, would you be proud of the life you left behind?
Or when you’re at the pearly gates and your life flashes before your eyes…
When you finally face what you ran away from your whole life…
Will you hang your head in shame?
What will you regret?
Will words go unsaid?
I hope you live the kind of life that’s so full…
There’s no unfinished business.
When your time comes…
I hope you’re fine with letting go.
I hope you never look back.
Don’t die without living.
Until next time,
Dancer, Writer, Buddhist.
