Kirk Cousins, the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, has a sculpture outside his house with an odd purpose: it’s intended to remind him that he’s going to die. Well, sort of.

Planning to live to 90, the quarterback has a jar of 720 stones (one for each month he intends to live) at his home. Each month, he takes a stone out of the jar and carries it with him. He told ESPN’s Tory Zawacki Roy that “every month [he’s] going to take out a stone, put it in [his] pocket, and think: ‘Once this month is over, this is gone. You can’t get it back, it’s gone for good.’”

It’s only a little morbid until you remember that, as Cousins takes out the stones, he has a visual reminder—right outside his front door, no less—that his time on Earth is getting shorter and shorter. That may sound morbid at first, but it’s also biblical. The idea actually came to Cousins from a Bible teacher, in response to Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This verse, Cousins says, is “about the importance of leaving a mark and making a deposit in people’s lives in a way that matters. In other words, you have an understanding that life is coming to an end someday, and that we only have so many days. There’s wisdom in that.”

Source:

Nick Lannon, “You (and Kirk Cousins) Are Going to Die,” Mockingbird blog (11-2-18)