You Will Die

Live Accordingly

Death comes for us all; even at our birth—even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. It is the law of nature, and the will of God. —Robert Bolt

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson

If you are reading these words, there’s a good chance you are alive.

Breathing and feeling and thinking and doing on this whirling dervish of a planet.

Savor it. Statistically speaking, you shouldn’t be.

Take some time to read the above deliberately. It is unbelievable in the literal sense of the term.

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From this perspective, all of life is mere borrowed time—spontaneous happenstance of which not one minute more is guaranteed.

Few people viscerally understand this. Indeed, many live life on autopilot; jerked to and fro by the stick of fear and carrot of short-term gratification. They drift along aimlessly and unconsciously until their hopes and dreams rest alongside their cold, dead corpses.

In my experience, those select few that “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life” fear regret much more than failure. If onlys and shoulds haunt their nightmares in place of literal and figurative last-place finishes.

They intuitively grasp that the time is now, the place is here, and there are no mulligans. It’s not merely a matter of spending each day “as if” it were their last. The point is that they grasp it always actually might be.

Taken at face value, life’s brevity seems devastating. Unfair, even.

Considered carefully, one realizes life is beautiful because of death.

Moderation begets meaning as, by definition, life unchecked is tumorous.

The point is not what you do, it’s your very capacity to do it.

As Oliver Burkeman writes, “[E]ach moment of decision becomes an opportunity to select from an enticing menu of possibilities…[Y]ou might easily never have been presented with the menu to begin with.”

That each gesture, trip, hug, kiss might be our last makes every single one that much more meaningful. In the wise words of writer Sara Bakewell, this is “the brute reality on which all of us ought to be constantly stubbing our toes.”

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If you are reading these words, you will one day die.

For that, be grateful. Against all odds, you have won the genetic lottery.

With every word and deed mirthfully laugh at the fathomless odds of your existence.

Declare “I am here and here is good.”

This day will never come again.

Be grateful and have at it.

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Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.

If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter X.

With sincere gratitude,

Tom