Comment by keybored

The opposite of nitpickingly missing the point is making grand generalizations and extrapolations.

No the What About Your Deathbed is annoying and has holes in it. You shouldn’t necessarily plan according to what your deathbed-self thinks.

Then you say no, you’re missing the point. It’s about having a finite life. For some reason I am perfectly capable of appreciating wisdom about life being finite when it is delivered in better ways. That is: the ways that I have the capacity to recognize as such.

If this Deathbed narrative is really about having a finite life then it should perhaps be better formulated. Wisdom is also about communication.

(Someone else has already mentioned memento mori... can it get more evocative than an emperor in a parade being reminded by a slave repeatedly that he is mortal like everyone else? The Deathbed formulation is far worse.)

I appreciate wisdom. At worst I can be accused of missing the forest for the trees sometime.