Live Like You Were Dying

When I was young, I never really was like most kids in a lot of ways. Specifically, unlike most teenagers, there never really was a time when I thought I was invincible. I always knew my time on Earth was finite, but at the same time, I always kind of just took it as a given that I'd be around for many decades.

In fact, right up until I was in my late 20s, I could often be heard saying I was going to live to be 100. And that wasn't just wishful thinking. Despite the fact that I'd been through numerous surgeries and other medical issues that probably should have killed me, I "knew" it was true.

Throughout most of my childhood and adolescence, I not only "knew" it was just a matter of fact that I was going to live for at least a century, I even used it as a means of simply proving doctors and other people wrong. As many around me know, I've always had a stubborn streak in me, so when I kept hearing doctors talk about how I shouldn't be alive or I wouldn't live past such and such a time, I just added that to the list of statements I had to prove wrong.

Looking back on it, I didn't have any sort of delusions of invincibility, but I might as well have. I was so focused on simply proving naysayers wrong that I was showing just as much hubris as the typical "invincible" teenager. I just hadn't realized it, yet.

As a result of my assumption that I had all the time in the world, I made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of things I don't really look back on favorably. But more importantly than that, I didn't do a lot of things I should have, because I "knew" I could just do it later. I missed a lot of opportunities that I should have taken advantage of when they were presented, all because it was easier to put it off.

Even when I made the move to Texas a few months after I turned 28, I could still be heard talking about how I was going to live at least another 72 years. In fact, as happy as I was with my situation there, I told more than a few people around the town I was living in that I could easily see myself making a home there for every bit of that long. While I was there, though, all it took was one event to change everything.

Over the past five years since I beat it, I've been told by a few people around me that surviving cancer changed me. I think that's a completely fair statement. When that diagnosis came, that was the first time I genuinely knew that I not only could, but I would die if things didn't go right. I wasn't anywhere near certain I'd be living to the age of 100 anymore.

Since then, I've come to realize that I really don't have any idea how much longer I have on this planet. For that reason, I've made a conscious decision to spend as much of my time as I can living like I'm dying, because for a most of 2016, I was and for months, I didn't even know it. I don't always succeed and I still make mistakes, but I put a whole lot more effort into making sure I don't miss out on valuable opportunities and don't put off the small things anymore.

So, yeah, cancer absolutely did change me, but it was one of the best changes that could have come to my life. I have no idea how long I have left to live, but that's kind of the whole point. That's exactly the reason I think of my own immediate convenience less and try to make sure to take advantage of the opportunities I'm given to not only enrich my own life, but those around me, even when it's troublesome. As I mentioned earlier, I don't always succeed and I do still make mistakes, but that's just a symptom of being human.

I used to beat myself up over my mistakes a lot more than I do now, but that's just another way in which having cancer changed me. Not only do I now realize life is simply too short to miss out on the important things out of a sense of immediate inconvenience, but it's also too short to dwell on past mistakes that can't be changed.

For anyone out there who might be struggling, or putting things off for whatever reason, I hope you'll take my life as an example and even if only for a day, live like you were dying.