When you will die is an easy question to answer, you see.
The answer is: Someday
I know. I know.
That answer does not help us much at all, does it?
But that’s the entire point!
We have to live each day of our lives without knowing the answer.
This is true the day you are born. The day you go to prom. The day you flunk your first college exam. The day you get married. The day you retire. And the day you turn 99.
It is also true the day before you die. And it is true if you are given a terminal diagnosis.
Take heart – this is all temporary.
Ugh.
Are you sick of me blogging about death?
This book was a fantastic read. But I’m frankly a little sick of writing about death too.
It’s all unsettling, indeed.
I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.
-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)