This Year Didn’t Ease Me In
2026 has started off rough. I lost three of my elders coming into the new year. They were humorous, quiet men—men who didn’t always say much, but meant so much to the people closest to them. The kind of presence you don’t fully understand until it’s gone. It’s those unspoken connections that I find myself thinking about now, trying to make sense of what they meant and what’s left behind.
At the same time, I’ve been grinding to keep up with everything—work, my health, my family—and feeling the weight of it all. It’s had me questioning the meaning of life more than I expected.
I’ve also come to realize that the loss of life—no matter how close or distant—always brings a sense of sadness and reflection, not just for me but for everyone left behind.
So when my kids’ spring break came around, I was looking forward to something simple: rest. I promised myself I would disconnect. No internet, no distractions. Just a book, as much sleep as I could get, and time with my family.
I Needed to Step Away From Everything
The book I picked up was Death: The Art of Living. I didn’t expect it to stay with me the way it did, but somewhere between the quiet mornings and long days with my kids, it pushed me into a deeper thought experiment. Not because it introduced the idea of death to me—but because it reminded me how long I’ve been carrying it.
Quiet, for me, looked like sitting on the balcony of my room as the boat moved through the open ocean, hearing the water rush past. Other times, it was in the stillness when my kids were asleep—those small pockets where everything slowed down just enough to think.
The First Time I Thought I Might Die
I’ve been thinking about death since I was about eight years old. I got really sick back then. The fever alone had me going through waves of heat and chills, constantly sweating, not knowing when it would stop. It felt like being stuck on a roller coaster I couldn’t get off.
What scared me most wasn’t just being sick—it was the feeling that I might die painfully, and alone.
I remember lying there at night, clutching my blanket tight, my body tense, trying to fight it out of me. I cried to my mother, telling her I didn’t want to die. I didn’t feel like I was getting any better, and that fear sat heavy in my chest. Even as a kid, it wasn’t abstract—it felt real, immediate.
Since then, I’ve had other hard and traumatic experiences that bring me back to that same question—not from a place of wanting to die, but from a place of genuine curiosity about what life actually means.
Death Feels Too Soon… But Forever Doesn’t Feel Right Either
Reading this book made me realize something: death always feels like it comes too soon. But the opposite—immortality—doesn’t feel like the answer either.
If I imagine being the only one who lives forever, everything starts to lose its weight.
There are a lot of ways to think about immortality. But for me, it becomes clearer when I center it around my own life. Outside of my wife and kids, my own experience of life is what I understand most deeply.
Looking at it through that lens helps me understand how I define the value of life in the first place.
Maybe the first 100,000 years are incredible. But what about the 100,001st? By then, I’ve watched generations of people I love come and go—over and over again.
At some point, wouldn’t life start to feel repetitive? Personalities repeat. Stories repeat. Even wonder starts to feel familiar. I could see everything—maybe even the stars themselves—but without people to share it with, what would any of it mean?
This Is Where It Landed for Me
That’s where this landed for me:
Meaning doesn’t come from time. It comes from connection.
And connection is fragile in both extremes. A life cut too short can take it away. But so can a life that never ends.
What Connection Actually Looks Like in My Life
So if neither is the answer, maybe what I’m really after is something in between—the longest, healthiest life I can live, grounded in both the present and the future.
I want to live in that tension. To stay engaged—to build, to grow, to create, to follow my curiosity, and to connect with people. To lean into things that push me to grow and feel worth showing up for.
To build for tomorrow—for the people in my life today, for the people I have yet to meet, and for those who come after me—while still treating each day like it matters on its own.
For me, connection right now looks like the phone calls from friends and family, sharing life updates and staying close even when life is busy. It’s getting pulled into a conversation with someone I just met and forgetting about time.
It’s also in the quiet moments—like sitting still, reflecting, and letting it really sink in that life itself is a gift.
And sometimes it’s as simple as watching my kids laugh at something small, knowing these are the moments that won’t last forever.
To show up fully in those moments. To have the conversations. To be present in these small windows of time.
So This Is What I’m Trying to Get Right
I keep coming back to something I’ve been realizing through all of this: the loss of life—no matter how close or distant—always brings a sense of sadness and reflection, not just for me but for everyone left behind.
But at the same time, the impact and memory of those who have passed are proof that their lives meant something. And it’s with that understanding that I try to carry their value forward in the way I live my own life.
Because if life can end at any moment, what matters to me isn’t how long it lasts—it’s how I show up while I’m here.
In the conversations I don’t rush.
In the moments I actually stay present for.
In the people I choose to stay connected to.
That’s what I’m trying to get right.
Connection and growth—that’s what makes it count.