Death Is Coming. Why Are You Living Like This?
A few weeks ago, a freak hurricane hit Portugal. A falling tree nearly killed me. In those seconds, every fear I’d been carrying dissolved.
Memento mori.
Death is always closer than it feels.
When you are forced to directly confront your mortality, everything trivial evaporates. Petty anxieties. Social scripts. Fear dressed up as responsibility. What remains is what actually matters.
The day before storm Kristin hit Portugal, I was ruminating over my divorce. Not in a clean, intellectual way, but heavy with the angst that comes from being pushed into choices you do not want to make. I had been pushed toward a conflict I never wanted. I felt trapped in a prison made of the heavy realization that I needed to act. But it was also a path I did not want. And it made me suffer… emotionally, anxiously, despairingly, continuously and unendingly.
Around me, the same tension was playing out in different souls.
My stepmother, in her 60s, was stressing over how to live next. There was an air of concern and compromise, almost a quiet desperation at the thought of being alone at the end of her life. She was finally free of family obligations, with no more kids to raise or telling her what she “should” do. And yet she was more constrained than ever… she had trapped her own mind in a prison of expectations and duties, and in doing so had forgotten how to live without them. She lived in fear, in scarcity, having forgotten the joy of being truly free, as if the freedom itself was the source of her despair.
At the other end of life, my little sister stressed over closing her own cycle. She grieved the end of her student life, the friendships and social world she had built during the final stretch of her master’s program. She felt unmoored and afraid. Her mind immediately went to scarcity and survival: Find a job. Be practical. Don’t waste time. “I’m broke”. “What do I need to do next?” “How will we survive?”
I tried to push back, to slow her down, to say ‘hold on, you can do whatever you like. You have a world of opportunity. Why don’t we take some time to figure it out?’ I recognized the fear instantly, because I had lived the same panic, in the same way.
I know exactly what it feels like to bind yourself in a prison of duty, to believe that staying inside it is the best thing you can do, and life you can have… when in reality, you are compromising your most sincere, authentic nature.
Different souls, ages, seasons of life… But the same prison.
As the day wore on, the emotional pressure built quietly. And then the storm hit.
The wind picked up as night fell, rattling the house, pressing against the stone walls. The outside world reflected the tension we had all been carrying inside.
Then the first shock hit.
The attic door slammed shut on its own, ripped from open air pressure. A violent, unnatural sound that snapped us awake instantly. Absolutely terrifying in its suddenness. We all jumped out to find the cause.
Not long after, the second impact. A massive tree crashed into the courtyard, snapped cleanly in half as if the 4 tonne tree was nothing but chopsticks against the force of the gale. The impact traveled through the house, shaking the floors, the walls, our bodies.
We stayed awake after that. Talking quietly. Listening to the wind. Waiting. Laughing out our fears and worries as sweet relief.
Near dawn and in total darkness, exhausted, we went down to the kitchen. We stood there, watching a secondl tree sway under the force of the storm. A massive gust came through, and the tree began to break, to fall directly toward us. For a moment, death felt inescapable. Then it stopped.
The 7 tonne tree had been stopped by the sheer strength of the stone walls. A weaker house would have given way. There was nothing to do but smile at the craziness of it all. Someone, a century before us, had built this house with love and care. Stone walls meant to outlast them. That thoughtfulness saved our lives.
Shock gave way to laughter. Joy. Gratitude. Awe. The pure, unfiltered pleasure of being alive. It came instantly, without effort. The question came back, sharper than before: how do I want to live the time I have left?
My stepmother’s fear made sense, but it didn’t have to rule her. My sister’s worry was real, but it would pass. And my own deep anxiety, I saw clearly, was not fixed.
Everything else disappeared. Fear and hesitation felt absurd. All the grievances I had been carrying simply fell away. They didn’t feel worth holding anymore.
Life is short. Time is borrowed. And if you are not spending that time on what you truly want, it isn’t prudence. It’s just a waste.
Death didn’t take us that night.
But one day it will.