I was on a plane to New York from Boston. There was some rough turbulence, and that is a given if we fly frequently enough. But each time it happens for me, I ask – what if this time is going to be that one time?
I think about my death a lot, but choosing to think consciously about it is really not the same when one is being forced to think about it.
It got real really quickly when the plane shook violently, especially with the knowing that my earlier flight was cancelled due to “inclement weather” and there’s a hurricane we were trying to avoid by taking an extended flight path that looked like tiny circles around Massachusetts.
I took a quick mental and emotional audit of my life, critically analyzing if there was anything I would have regretted doing or not doing. I don’t think I could have tried to be more alive than I was already attempting to be, with all factors and context considered.
Travel, the one thing that magnifies the paradox of quickening the urgency of how we live and yet provokes the neccessity to slow down and let go.
I hope to never lose my desire to keep on questioning myself, and that I will be blessed enough to keep on encountering opportunities for myself to face my own mortality right in the face, to always be reminded that it is really there with us all the time, we are just not very good at recognizing it.