Death has been on my mind quite a bit recently. Like, thinking about it every day kind of on my mind. And if I'm being honest, it kind of freaked me out at first. The fact that I won't be on this planet forever, that at some point, my existence here will cease to be. However, after that popping into my head almost everyday for the past month, I've found that it really acts as a motivator.
It's made me realize that because I do have limited time on this planet, I want to do as much as I possibly can in the time I'm given. Not that I didn't want to do things with my life before, but the fact that death is unavoidable has made me want to make even more of an impact because, well, I don't have all the time in the world.
The reason I'm writing this is not because I want to complain about having to die one day - that's not it at all. I'm writing this because one, it's a very real fear that I'm sure almost everyone deals with at some point in their lives and no one wants to talk about, and two, with the election coming up and with all of the problems around the world (Syrian Crisis, Hurricane Matthew and Haiti, etc.) I have realized that I want to leave this world better than when I came into it.
So I guess you could say I'm writing about this to start a discussion and to encourage people everywhere to think about how they want to leave this world. Do you want to die angry and bitter? Or do you want to go knowing that you did your part? I don't know about you, but I'm going to have to go with the latter. We need to figure out a way to make that happen. I think the answer is simple: it's love.
Love is the way we can make our time here even better. Love can overcome anything. Something I've heard people say a lot in the past year (and throughout my lifetime, really) is about people being evil. I refuse to believe that people are born innately evil. No. I think evil is formed by its surroundings. I think that as a society, we are so terrified of "badness" or "evil" that we end up pushing it onto certain people. There's a quote from my favorite author, Neil Gaiman, that is probably one of my favorite quotes ever:
"Monsters are just scared. That's why they're monsters." (Ocean at the End of the Lane)
Whenever I feel myself thinking that someone is bad or whenever I start to feel hateful towards someone (which believe me, has happened a lot this election - it's really been quite a test), I remind myself of this quote. I think we are so scared of anything unknown, in this case death, that we forget to enjoy life. That's my goal - to live life to the fullest, because you never know when death will guide you to whatever's next. I know it's a little cliche to say, but it's true. Travel. Love. Help your community. Be kind to strangers. Don't judge based on appearances. Enjoy your time, because you never know how much you will get.
