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>> Jeanine Staples: So I am here
with some bad news and some good news.
Bad news first.
I'm here to warn you I believe your life is in danger.
I believe that sometime tonight, maybe tomorrow,
and definitely by next week you're going to die.
You can't avoid it, and it will probably be violent.
Don't worry, though, you're not alone.
I'm going to die, too.
The difference between you
and me is that I'm going to die peacefully.
The good news is I can teach you how to die peacefully, too.
But first I'm going to tell you how we got into this mess
and how we can get out.
As human beings, our lives are constantly in danger
because we're constantly in a dilemma.
We are hardwired to avoid pain, separations,
and challenges to our sense of self-worth.
And yet no matter what we do all day long constantly,
we are confronted with pain, separations,
and challenges to our sense of self-worth.
And this dilemma creates a tension in our soul,
a kind of disease that we have to navigate over
and over again, and we're not really that good at it.
It's kind of like how this internal struggle is
like the precipice for even more.
But there's a solution; we can fix it.
The way to address this dilemma is to learn
to reorient our understanding of how life really works.
This means rereading dynamically the life events
that trigger the dilemma over and over again.
Now, reading differently and dynamically, that's what I do.
As Rob said, I am a sociocultural literacist.
I collect life stories of people inside of schools
and outside of schools, and I interpret the ways
that people read, write, and talk about their identities
and their experiences.
Now, I've been doing this for over ten years.
And my work has always been implicitly based
on a fundamental idea that I never thought to question,
and I bet you would never question it, either --
it's that life precedes death.
So that we're doing this: We experience a birth,
we experience a life, and we experience a death.
But actually, this isn't true.
That's not what we're doing.
The presence of our dilemma precludes this configuration.
The presence of our dilemma means
that we're experiencing more pain and more disorder
than we acknowledge.
So actually, the truth is death precedes life.
The quality of our deaths determines the quality
of our life.
If we can learn to die peacefully,
we can learn to live peacefully.
Now, I stumbled upon this idea a few years ago
when I was going through a particular struggle.
A lot of people in my immediate family were dying,
and they were dying back to back to back.
And they weren't old.
And I didn't know how to handle my grief, my sense of loss.
The dilemma in me was being triggered over and over again,
and it created an amazing sense of disease.
So I went back to my research, which is my safe space.
And I pored over thousands and thousands of hours of stories
that I'd collected over the years.
And I stumbled upon something that I'd never noticed before,
and it was mainly because I wasn't looking for it.
And it is that people use the language of death, and grief,
and loss whether they're talking about failing a class,
breaking up with somebody, getting a scary diagnosis,
or burying a loved one.
And I figured it out:
Since language is a sociocognitive signifier,
we have to pay attention.
What we speak is what we think,
and what we think is what we believe.
And if we think and believe in our souls
that we're experiencing death,
then we are in effect experiencing death all day long.
We are dying a thousand deaths.
So I got excited.
I know you wouldn't think that you'd get excited about that,
but I got really excited.
So I went back to my data to find out the types
of death we're dying as we live, and I found them.
We are dying four types of death.
Now, if you read this scale,
the deaths decrease in frequencies from left to right,
and they decrease in intensity from right to left.
We'll start with the left.
There's something called "everyday deaths."
Everyday deaths are the most common types
of deaths that we die.
They are plentiful, they're microaggressive,
they're developmentally sensitive.
That means the types of everyday deaths you die
at ten don't really bother you at thirty.
But they grow with you.
So here's some examples.
An everyday death is when you're in a meeting
and your boss calls on you to expound upon a point,
maybe on a project, but you have no idea what she's
talking about.
You die a little death.
Another everyday death is when the guy that you really,
really like, he doesn't call you.
He doesn't return your text.
Another everyday death is
when you get a rejection letter -- the fifth one.
You didn't get into any
of the graduate schools you applied to.
Then there are someday deaths.
These are more altering; they're a little bit more intense.
They are definitely based in relationships.
So a someday death happens to everybody someday.
It's when you have a falling out with your best friend,
you stop talking; it's when you have a screaming match
with your mother, you get all anxious and upset;
it's when you end a relationship
that you really thought was going to go the distance
with somebody that you really cared about.
Then there's the any day death.
Now, these more traumatic.
We're getting closer to the end of the scale here.
An any day death has this lead up.
They have these markers that tell you that they're coming,
but they're still so traumatic that it doesn't matter.
They always feel like a shock.
So an any day death is, for example,
when you have to bury your grandfather.
An any day death happens when, for example,
you have to file for bankruptcy because you lost your job;
or when your husband walks out on you and you have to file
for divorce; it's when you get a scary diagnosis --
that's an any day death.
Then this is the one we know well -- the one day death.
That's our literal demise.
That's when our physical body expires
and our soul goes where it will.
Now, all of these deaths inspire violence
because they all trigger our dilemma over and over
and over again all day long.
And if we don't manage these well, we're not living well.
And they're never going to stop.
We will never stop dying as we live.
So what are we going to do?
The key is to die peacefully.
It's to become highly literate at dying peacefully.
And I'm going to teach you how to do it.
I'm going introduce you to the three ways that death happens
in your life story, and the three ways
that you can mediate a peaceful facilitation
of those deaths.
Okay, let's begin.
Any day now, you or someone that you love with be diagnosed
with a scary illness, or God forbid, you may be raped,
or you will have to file for bankruptcy.
When that happens, death will rise up as a monster.
It will trigger your deepest fears
and your deepest insecurities.
Now, here's what we know about monsters: They're mute.
They usually have no language.
The purpose of a monster is to stare you down;
the purpose of a monster is to intimidate you;
it's to invoke foreboding.
So two things are going to happen
when you're confronted with your monster.
First, you're going to have a physical reaction.
Your head is going to start aching; you probably will close
up in your throat; your jaws will clench;
your heart will start palpitating;
you will maybe have knots in your belly.
The second thing that's going to happen
and you're going to want to run.
You'll want to get the hell out of there.
And how do we run?
We pop a pill; we take a drink; we have a big plate of food;
maybe we go work out; we read a book;
we go try to find somebody to have sex with;
we might actually call our best friend or text somebody.
What I want you to do when that happens is be still.
Don't run.
Breathe. Imagine the pain that is coursing
through your body as power.
Envision the monster in front of you,
look at the gaping holes where his eyes should be
and his white pearly teeth ready
to devour you, and don't flinch.
Stand inside yourself, be brave.
Imagine the monster as beautiful, poetic.
That's step one: Breathe.
Don't run from your death.
Someday -- someday someone
that you love very much is going to leave you.
They might do that through a literal death
that can't be helped or they may do it just by walking
out the door and saying "Goodbye,
you're not the one for me."
When this happens, death will rise up again.
Death will probably rise up this time as a bully.
Now, what do we know about a bully?
A bully does have words; a bully has a loud voice;
a bully is loud and is screaming at you;
a bully will fill your soul with lots of "you" statements;
it's accusatory; it will point a finger at you and say,
"You're stupid, you're a fool, you're to blame,
you should feel guilty, you're not enough."
And when that happens, you might want to fight.
You might want to throw up your dukes
to try to defend yourself.
But I'm going to encourage you don't do that.
Assume the position, reposition.
Dialogue, don't defy.
This is what you say to your death: "I'm listening.
Thank you for speaking.
No matter what is said between us, I will not abandon you.
I will not leave you.
You can stay with me.
You can come to me and find rest."
Dialogue, don't defy.
When you dialogue with your death this way,
you are practicing unconditional love
in the face of your terror.
And then every day, every single day you'll experience these
microaggressive deaths,
these little ways that death will chip at you:
The guy won't call; the girl won't accept your date;
you won't get into graduate school;
you'll have to do some public speaking.
When those experiences happen, death will rise up again.
If you're the root of gossip, for example;
if you're not good enough; if you're too much of something
or too little of something else; maybe you're too tall,
too fat; maybe you're not smart enough, not athletic enough;
death will rise up as a tempter.
A tempter is not mute or dark,
a tempter is not screaming at you.
It's not a bully.
A tempter has a completely different configuration.
A tempter whispers.
A tempter whispers, and tells you,
and reveals your deepest inadequacies --
all of the things that you think you're hiding,
all of the things you don't want anyone to see,
all the ways that you don't feel good enough.
And the tempter will whisper to you and it will invoke lots
of "maybe" statements into your soul.
The tempter will say, "Maybe you're not good enough.
Maybe you'll never win.
Maybe you should just quit."
And when this happens, if you're tired,
you probably will want to give up.
But I'm going to encourage you don't do that, either.
Assume the position.
Come back.
But assume the position and continue the dialogue
from a space of authority
and say to your death, "I hear you.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for speaking.
And now I am going to chart a new course
because I'm in control here.
I'm the boss.
I'm not going to leave you or abandon you.
Get behind me.
Follow." When you do this, when you write
and you don't relinquish your power to the death that tries
to terrify you, you are authoring your own life story
with power and with faith.
Now, incrementally each of these parts of the practice work
in about 60 seconds.
That's good news.
That means that we can die peacefully all day long as little
or as much as we want without any inclinations for rushing.
Now, why does this work?
Dying peacefully works because it enables us
to practice dying with courage,
to walk in unconditional love,
and to author our own life stories no matter what happens,
no matter what comes.
So instead of asking each other, "How you doing?"
you should be asking each other "How you dying?"
Are you dying with courage,
with unconditional love, with authority?
I encourage you become highly literate at dying peacefully
so that you can go further and live the life of your dreams.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]