mortality

Certain events recently gave me a rude reminder of my mortality. Although I never contended that I am immortal, I've been living as though I am. I fit into the psych profile for my age group: individuals at this stage in life just feel invincible. I know I could die at any moment, but I thought the chances of that actually happening is about as high as the chances of me winning the lottery.

I guess it's because I'm at my physical peak. After all, how many people do you know died at my age? We expect, my contemporaries and I, and we are expected to have several more decades of life ahead of us.

And so we go through each day as though we're going to live forever. We take unnecessary risks, arrogantly taunting the powers in the world. We tend to be complacent and lazy, always thinking we have all the time in the world to pursue our dreams, right our wrongs and make our mark in this world.

The painful truth is, being young and at your peak doesn't make dying any less real. It can actually happen, even when you're in perfect health and when you're always in a safe place. That's the harsh reality. I am as vulnerable to death as any other human being. It can happen in a snap, or it may take a while, but dying is not impossible.

Like it or not, I'm not going to live forever. And what scares me is I don't think I've lived my life in such a way that I could die at any moment and be at peace with it. There's much unfinished business. It took a great jolt for me to realize that today may be all the time I have.