Today I was thinking that you’re only ever one day away from the worst news of your life. A global pandemic has essentially shut down life as we know it, a family friend just found out he has a brain tumor, a co-worker’s mom just had a heart attack, an acquaintance just committed suicide, a high school friend just passed away from breast cancer. She was only 30. We are courting disaster each day of our lives. We are constantly towing the line of tragedy.
People think Alex Honnold is crazy because he will climb insane heights without ropes. But is he really any crazier than the rest of us? At least he knows he is only one step away from plummeting to his death. The rest of us walk around like we aren’t. Life doesn’t come with safety nets, harnesses, or ropes. You don’t know if the day when the worst thing that will ever happen to you is tomorrow. Or even today. What will you do when your day comes? What will you wish you had done before it gets here?
Sorry if all of this sounds doom and gloom but life is short and all that. No regrets blah blah blah. I guess Mary Oliver said it best (as poets usually do) at the end of her poem “The Summer Day”:
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?