The Sound You Hear

May 9th, 2025
by Quenise Nance

The Sound You Hear

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That Sound You Hear

Twenty years ago, 53-year-old Eugene O’Kelly was chairman and CEO of KPMG, one of America’s largest accounting firms.

He lived life at breakneck speed.

He and his family rarely went on vacation together. He missed virtually every school function of his seventh-grade daughter.

But the O’Kellys would have all the time together they needed when he retired, as he planned, at age 58.

On one occasion O’Kelly was frustrated that he couldn’t secure an appointment with an important potential client, a banker who lived in Australia.

When he learned that the banker was going to take a 90-minute flight from Sydney to Melbourne, O’Kelly booked himself in the first class seat right next to him. Then he flew 22 hours from New York to Sydney, quickly boarding the flight to Melbourne.

He introduced himself to the shocked Australian and closed the deal within 90 minutes.

Then he flew back to Sydney and boarded the 22-hour return flight to Manhattan.

We’re talking about a seriously motivated guy.

O’Kelly recalled, “Over the course of my last decade with the firm, I did manage to squeeze in workday lunches with my wife. Twice.”

Then everything came to an end.

In the spring of 2005, O’Kelly was diagnosed with an advanced glioblastoma, a late stage brain cancer. It was inoperable. He died four months later.

Chasing Daylight is the personal record of that final summer when he rethought his entire existence. The subtitle of his book is “How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.”

O’Kelly writes, “For ten years I had been going 100 miles an hour, all straightaways, no turns. On the day I died, I would be going zero.”

He learned a great deal in a short period of time about the nature of commitment.

He had always assumed that the ultimate evidence of commitment was cramming everything you possibly could into every spare minute. But as his life slowed down, it dawned on him that genuine commitment is actually about giving your life, as best you can, to the things that matter most.

Every one of us is qualified, right now, to write a book with the same subtitle: “How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.”

Eugene O’Kelly was given a death sentence. You and I have been given death sentences, too.

All of us are terminal cases.

Think back over the past four months of your life. Would you want your behaviors and decisions during those days – the way you spent time with family members, colleagues, and God – to represent your last four months of life?

If not, what’s standing in the way of living right now the way you have always felt called to live?

The way we answer that question goes to the heart of what it means to live wisely.

Don’t put off discerning, with God’s help, your very best answer. Then choose to live it.

That sound you hear is the ticking of the clock.

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Glenn McDonald is an ordained Presbyterian minister, has 45 years of congregational and workplace leadership experience, and is the author of ten books on discipleship and spiritual formation. He and Mary Sue have four children, nine grandchildren, and enjoy living on a small horse farm not far from Indianapolis.

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