Life is Not Promised

Daily Meditation 893–8/10/2024

When I was a young man, there was a woman not much older than I — she was perhaps in her mid 20s. 27, 28 or so.

She had been in a relationship essentially with her high school sweetheart. He was a wild and crazy guy. Hilarious and personable. I distinctly remember him laughing “like a dolphin” to lighten the setting somewhere serious, once. He was in many ways a bit the opposite of her — quiet, bookish, and seemingly serious. But he made her laugh and laugh.

Well, his wild and crazy guy antics sadly put him 6 feet under very young. He had a offroading accident and was killed instantly. Riding without a helmet, the young man hit some sort of rut or rock, was thrown at full speed and his bare skull dashed against a great stone. Fortunately he did not suffer.

But it was such a horrific, leaden burden for such a young woman to bear. She and him had been together since they were maybe 18, had been married many years, and really enjoyed one another. What a waste.

All these years later, she is now well into her 40s and still alone, having not once went back to dating. If anything, she is quieter, more bookish, and serious…so serious without him that she is likely totally without laughter as he is no longer with her to make her laugh.

Without belaboring the point, any reader of these Daily Meditations know: we must meditate daily and deeply on death. We see the dead fawn, a young and supple baby deer laying smashed upon the side of the road and we hastily usher such dark thoughts from our head — the poor mother doe, had the child suffered, and so on. But we must use moments to consider our own mortality and the softness of the flesh of our loved ones.

An illness. An aneurysm. An accident.

It really, really doesn’t take much for so much to be robbed of our lives, least of all our own life.

In closing — remember death each and every day. I understand it’s a “meme” to say life is short, but honestly it’s not just short, but there’s a fair odd that it’ll be shorter than your wildest expectations. Respect death, love death, meditate on death to understand and become accepting of death and fill your LIFE with time with those you LOVE.

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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”