“If you were to die tomorrow would you be satisfied with the life you’ve lived?” This was a question asked to me by a man I met in a hostel in Hungary in November. I replied: “No, how could I be? There is so much I want to do, places I want to see, and people I want to love”. The conversation we proceeded to have over the next six hours has forever changed the way I will think about life, and ultimately death:
Our lives are made up of an endless series of choices. Time, money, energy, love, friendships and how we prioritize them all are all choices we make daily that determine how satisfied we are with what we have “done” to date. If we lived every day as if we had months to live and not decades you would take that trip you’ve been wanting to take, chase that dream you’ve been putting off, quit that job that you hate, love that person you’re afraid to love. But we don’t, because as humans we have it set in our minds most of the time that we will always have more time, a tomorrow, a later. And maybe we do, maybe we have all the time in the world, but maybe we don’t.
There’s so much to do in the world that I don’t think I will ever truly feel “done” but these days I am living my life trying to fill each day with meaning; be a little better than I was yesterday. So when I wake up each morning, I am grateful to have been given another day, to do more, to feel more and to be better.
Death is a scary concept we cannot control, but the fear of its inevitability is a tool we can use to live our very best lives, so when that time finally does come, we won’t have regrets, only gratitude that we didn’t waste a single moment of it.
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