Hit

The realization that I really almost died this year; that I really could have DIED: it just hit me.

I read an article about James Franco a few months ago. He said that as a kid... or it was his mom saying it... as a kid he was afraid to die because he said he had too many things to do. I'm feeling that way. "One always dies too soon- or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up." At some point we have no choice; we either randomly die or we get ill & find out we are dying soon. I never thought about death as something that came by surprise when you were totally content. No wonder people fear death: it's truly scary to consider that it's basically beyond our control when or how we die. I'm afraid to plan my life out; to get happy or to get busy because if I died tomorrow I wouldn't be satisfied that I had lived a good life or that I'd been successful. I need more time to get things done and be the person I always wanted to be. For some reason I've always thought I was guaranteed tomorrow; that my life needed to come to some cathartic conclusion to end, like in movies. But it could end at any moment. How do people live each day knowing this?