The Fragility of Life and the Limits of Time

Life can easily be taken away from you. It doesn’t matter who you are–rich, famous, or powerful–the life you live is not forever and your time here is only temporary. If you acknowledge this transience you’ll never waste a day of your life and you’ll realize the importance of every single day.

I keep a little case of dead butterflies in my room. I have kept them for years and they have stayed preserved and in the same form as the day I found them. They have not decayed under the glass but they have become dry like paper since life no longer fills their wings. Butterflies, I think, best represent the ephemeral quality of life and yet whenever I see them flutter around I feel happy because they seem so happy. I wonder if they know the shortness of life or if life for them is like an eternity. I think that the saddest part of living is that we often take it for granted while we are alive. We have this expectation that tomorrow will always come…but there will be one day when we won’t have a tomorrow. The question is when–on what day, at what hour, and how old will you be when that time comes?

Life is that precious gift that comes packaged with a heartbeat and many breaths but it is much more than this. Life is something that grows. Everyday we fill it with something new. New memories, new dreams, new friends. No one will ever have a life quite like yours; from start to finish your life is intricate and unique.

I think about my life often and in consequence I also think a lot about death. I admit that it is a strange thing to acknowledge as a living person that one day I will not be here anymore. Honestly, what I worry about the most is that my life will be cut short and that I won’t have to time to share all that I wish to share with everyone. I let this life/death anxiety fuel me but at the same time I don’t worry too much because there is a thought that comforts me. As we live, we leaves traces of ourselves everywhere and most of the time we aren’t even aware of it. These pieces of ourselves we leave behind are more than just tangible evidence like photographs and writings; the part of ourselves that continues  is our essence–or how we make people feel. It is the mark we have made and it means more than just saying so-and-so was here.