Feel alive
That post by Oliver Sacks went viral, as he mused while he learned he was dying of terminal cancer:
“On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.”
Twitter reacted, as we do when we face death, even when it is not our own:
I spent this week in isolation by deliberate design, as I reflected upon the intensity I have been leading my life with. I have made a ton of seemingly insane decisions, guided by my intuition and the incessant urgency to maximize my life.
I do not carry any illusions with my mortality or the privilege I have right now. I am acutely aware that my life, health, or anything I have, can be taken away at any given moment. Some nights I wake up convinced I would stop breathing. I am only 34, but sometimes I experience chronic pain so debilitating that writing has become a luxury. One day we may wake up to realize what used to come easy for us no longer flows free.
The intensity I have has a price.
Being one’s true self is not just one decision in time, but a conscious decision over and over again. I rise out of these phases broken, but still convinced that I cannot live my life any way else except to live it as though I am going to die any moment.
This has empowered me through great distances and experiences. I am not afraid to lose what I’ve painstakingly gained, because I know they don’t mean much when I’m dead. I don’t want to be a disappointment to myself on my deathbed.
So I keep on carrying the fire that has lighted so much of my life and my work, and yet burning me out at the same time.
I think I am willing to pay that price, in exchange for feeling truly alive as long as I am still alive. I don’t wish to wait till death is truly imminent, for me to realize I should have loved deeper, traveled further, written more.
“There is no time for anything inessential.” — Oliver Sacks
This isn’t the first post I have written about my mortality, and it wouldn’t be the last.
