Just a reminder: You could be dead tomorrow

posted by Jeff | Tuesday, April 3, 2012, 10:29 PM | comments: 0

From time to time, it seems like there is a perfect storm of reminders that you could in fact be living the last day of your life. It's like life has a way of telling you that you're temporary.

Today, the reminders were not particularly personal, but they were numerous. It started on the news. Tornados wipe out lives at random. Some dude shoots up a college. People get cancer. Then I saw on Facebook that an author in my programming circles died (didn't know him, just knew of him).

When I couple this information with my own displeasure over some relatively minor problems I've had recently, it wakes me up a bit. In the simplest sense, I got to carry on today, but there are no guarantees about any day going forward. Even if that's scary to think about, it's a somewhat useful motivator to get off of your ass and avoid feeling sorry for yourself over the things that trouble you.

It's actually kind of crappy to think that the pain of others can motivate you to feel better, I admit. Then again, knowing pain has a funny way of making you appreciate pleasure even more. There's something to think about.


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