People often discover at the time of their death that they're much more than the small, separate self they've taken themselves to be. What's amazing to me is that we take all that we are and shrink it down to such a small story. And then live into that story as if it were true. At the end of their life, people realize they were living in too small a story.

We have this term that we use "later". Its very comfortable, this term "later". It's always gonna be later: "I'll get to that later" or "Death will come later". I think it gives us a comfortable distance from this experience that's rather mysterious to us. Death is not just happening to us at the end of a long road. Its always with us. It's in the marrow of every passing moment. I call it "the secret teacher that's hiding in plain sight" that helps us to discover really what matters.

Frank Ostaseski, What the living can learn from the dying