While We Are Here

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

— Epictetus

My parents are getting older.

Watching people who once seemed indestructible become slower and more fragile has changed something inside me. Turning fifty-seven has only intensified it. Mortality, once an abstract idea reserved for old age, now feels like an increasingly familiar companion.

These thoughts and feelings have always been in the back of mind since my early twenties – some months and years I was able to control them better than others. But getting older, while it has its perks, also brings the questions I believe we all ponder at one point.

Is there an afterlife after this one and is there a God or supreme being or causation of all this wonder? What about my children and family that I leave behind? Will I ever see and touch them again?

The questions amplify some days if I do not keep myself busy – as my OCD briefly takes control. And I write mostly. Writing has become therapeutic for me. Seeing my thoughts, fears, hopes, joys, and dreams on the screen brings calm that I cannot explain. Writing brings a relief that washes over me and keeps me in the present as I type on the keyboard. I hope that the fellow writers will understand.

But mortality, death, humanity – the ultimate questions about why we are here, what is our purpose in this enormous universe on a tiny speck of a planet persist.

But are these thoughts the battles we should be fighting? Perhaps it is fear that Epictetus speaks about in the quote at the beginning of this essay. The fear that, though we are here in the flesh, are we just existing and really living? Are we not tasting the fruits of what a miraculous chance it is to be alive?

I believe the ultimate question may just be, “Now that I understand how fortunate I am just to exist, what am I going to do with this opportunity given to me?” Each of us has roughly a one in four hundred trillion chance of ever being born.

Taking it a step further, do we play it safe and play the cards we were dealt? Be selfish and look out for ourselves only? Or do we take chances as well as be kind and show compassion and empathy to others? These are questions that determine whether you lived a good life. The answers to these questions determine how you want to be remembered. What do you want your legacy to be?

I do not have the answers to the essential questions we all probably have. But the best questions are worth asking. And through these questions we discover who we are, where we are on our journey, and perhaps where we are going.

I know one thing with certainty – We all die.

None of us will escape death. We never have. The real question is not how much time we are given but what we do with that time – were we truly alive while we had it.

Love people deeply.

Be curious.

Forgive often.

Leave the world better and a little kinder than you found it.

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

The rest, perhaps, is beyond our knowing.

But above all…

keep searching.