Independence

Yesterday I set off some fireworks with family at my sisters house. It seems the quality of fireworks has gone down over the past year, because these ones kept falling over and shooting at us, and a small fire was started in the bushes, which we scrambled to put out.

After that adrenaline rush, I kept thinking of how easily I could have been terribly injured. And on the drive home I kept thinking about how I could easily die at any moment, and convinced myself for a few moments that I would likely die soon.

It was a strange feeling. You can know, logically, that you will die one day. You can say all the platitudes–life is short, you’ll be old before you know it, one day you’ll wake up and realize you’ve wasted your life… etc–but feeling it is something else all together.

I realized–and accepted, on some deeper level than I had before, that my time is very limited. I might only have a couple years left, or a couple months. There is no way to know. And even if I’m lucky and have 30 or 50 years to go, that is still going to fly by extremely fast.

We have very little time to do the things we want, and we shouldn’t waste that time worrying about if we’re doing it right, or good enough for someone else.

Just do it.  Don’t put it off. Do it now.

I’m going to write as much as I can before I die. And I hope that some of it will resonate with enough people to live on for a while after I’m gone.

I don’t know what this has to do with Independence day, except maybe that I’m now more independent from myself. I’m not going to rely on time or life to work out in a convenient way. I’m going to do it now, while I can!