Mortality

Perhaps for those of us who aren't terminally ill ourselves, we tend to write off our own (admittedly limited) ability to imagine our mortality and with it, unfortunately, all the instructiveness that might bring to our lives. 

I think we aren't condemned to live out the same unhappy patterns as people who came before us (and in some cases warned us not to). I don't want to wait till I have six months to live to realize that I cared about all the wrong things, spent my whole life under a delusion, and failed to appreciate all the beauty of this world. And then spend the remaining short time in regret and surprise. If it's possible for me to catch a little bit of that feeling of mortality, even as a non-terminally ill person, perhaps I can avoid that fate. 

You might also say this dream of permanence that we all live in from day to day is kind of foolish: After all, the news is often who died and how. With people dying all around us, how does the dream persist so tenaciously and not get dispelled?

This raises another point: If I don't try to live correctly today, in accordance with my mortality, what if I don't even get a final six months in which to do it? There are thousands of non-terminally ill people who are alive right now, around the world, who won't be tomorrow, due to some accident. This is a cliche in the saying; a whole different thing when taken to heart.