death is near

you are going to die

not eventually. not theoretically. not in the abstract, philosophical sense. you — the person reading this right now — will one day cease to exist. and you have no idea when.

most people know this intellectually but have never truly sat with it. this exercise forces you to.

the thought experiment

find a quiet place. close your eyes. and genuinely imagine that death is coming:

if you had 1 day to live: what would you do? who would you call? what would you say? what regrets would consume you? what would suddenly seem trivially unimportant?

if you had 1 month to live: would you go to work? would you stay in your current relationship? would you keep scrolling social media? how would your priorities instantly rearrange?

if you had 1 year to live: what would you start? what would you finish? what would you stop tolerating? who would you spend time with? who would you cut loose?

what emotions arise?

pay attention to what comes up. fear? regret? urgency? peace? whatever you feel, ask yourself: why do I feel this way?

if the idea of dying tomorrow fills you with regret, that regret is pointing to something you should be doing right now but aren't. if certain people immediately come to mind, that tells you who actually matters. if certain activities suddenly seem meaningless, they probably are.

memento mori

the stoics practiced this daily. "remember you will die" wasn't a morbid obsession — it was a lens for living fully. when you internalize the reality of your own mortality, something profound happens: the present moment becomes infinitely more valuable.

you stop putting things off. you stop wasting time on people and activities that don't matter. you stop caring about the trivial bullshit that used to consume your energy.

the gift of death awareness

death isn't the enemy. unconsciousness is. living as though you have forever is what kills the urgency, the passion, the aliveness that makes existence worth something.

you don't have forever. act accordingly.

if this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it.