There a lot of things to live for in the course of a lifetime – ask a terminally ill patient who is focused on all the things they want to do but can’t.

                I’m not afraid of dying – I’m afraid of not having lived.

                We live in a busy world. We are blinded by personal objectives, deadlines and goal oriented desires providing only momentary pleasures that barely linger in our short-term memories. Where’s the spice in it? Where’s the juice to quench our thirst for knowledge? Does everybody feel the same way about death? Or are we all just afraid to truly live?

                Think about all the things that happened to you in your life; getting married, watching your children being born – all the events that you can’t forget. The wonderful, monumental epiphanies that have made you feel happy and alive. The times you gave something to help somebody out or shared something or laughed with someone. When did you feel the joy or the heartache or the pain that defined your character? When did you experience that time when you wanted nothing more than to stand on the tallest building and scream, “I AM HERE!”?

                These aren’t the little things that happen to us as random acts of mediocrity – these are the lessons of humanity that characterize us, the notifications that we are human. Don’t pass on the opportunity to laugh or cry or share. Humankind has grown and diversified in so many ways; and there so many ways that keep us differentiated as people too. These days, we focus on differences – ‘us and them’ seems the commonality. We are a race bent on individuality. We keep ourselves separated by countries, nations, states, cities and neighbourhoods, we refuse to see our greatest similarities – our humanity. We have achieved historical accomplishments together where separately we have demonstrated our ability for mass destruction. We teach our children to work together, team effort and cooperation, but practice something entirely different when we grow up.