I don’t want to, but I’m not afraid to die. Just watched Jimmy V’s speech and it reminded me of this article I read. Cancer is a scary word. You can eat right, exercise 5 times a week, stay away from drugs/alcohol/cigarettes, and somehow still end up with it. And then there are people who eat bacon everyday, chain smoke, don’t wear sunscreen or exercise, and never have to hear the phrase malignant cell growth.
To be clear, I don’t have cancer and I’m not dying. Well, I am dying, but only in the sense everyone has been dying since the day they were born. I do think about death a lot, because I’m still searching for the meaning of life, which is difficult to do unless you think about death.
In July of 2003 I flew to Japan for my first real job to teach English. I had never been there (or any other foreign country) before and it was an exciting and scary move. I arrived in Osaka for training with a group of other young grads and we quickly bonded, or more like held on to each other for dear life as we explored this strange land.
In this group was a young man named a Jeff. During that one week of training, the two of us would meet in the common room because we couldn’t get over our jetlag, and go out for a run in the wee hours of the morning. He was from a small town in the US and majored in elementary education. He can be a goofster when he wanted but was one of the most mature out of all of us.
After training we were sent to different corners of Japan and I only saw Jeff once more. We did keep in touch all this time, and some time in March of 2004, he texted to let me know he was ending his contract early to go home and start a company with a friend. We made plans to meet up back in the states when I go back that summer.
On one Sunday morning I got a call from our trainer, which was strange since I hadn’t talked to her since our training days. She called to tell me Jeff died in a drunk driving accident. It was his last day at work. He and a coworker were walking home from his farewell party when a drunk driver failed to stop at a crosswalk. She couldn’t even finish without crying.
It was the end of spring. As I walked to and from work every day, the frail remnants of cherry blossoms floated about wildly in the air, in a most tragically beautiful manner.
I don’t think I really talked about this with anyone at the time. I may not have even cried much. Jeff was the first person I know that got taken away so quickly and too early. But ever since then whenever I make a really important decision in life, I think to myself: if I were to get run over by a car tomorrow, would I regret making this decision today? Even though I still plan for the future and by no means live a reckless life, I always try to really enjoy and appreciate the now, because none of us really know whether we’ll be here tomorrow.
Remember Dunbar from Catch-22? The guy who wants a life filled with unpleasant conditions so it would seem longer? When asked why, he said, “what else is there?” I guess he’s a follower of Sartre, and while it sounds depressing on the surface, it is a worthy question. What else is there? We have conjectured many possibilities, but no one knows for sure. The mystery of death makes life ever so precious.
What to do before you go? Do you know?
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