FRI
Something happened today
At seventy-two, mortality is not an abstract concept. I do not say that morbidly. It is simply arithmetic. My life is singular. The years are finite. There is something in me that keeps asking: If I am going to die, then let me find something in this life that brings me truly alive. When I said that, the sentence hit harder than I expected. Because it was not really about death. It was about aliveness.
It is easy to hear a sentence about mortality as an expression of fear. There was fear in the background, of course; I am not immune to arithmetic. But what came to the foreground was appetite. I wanted to know what still had the power to draw me fully into life. I didn’t want an inventory of respectable ways to occupy the years ahead. I wanted engagement that felt real.
I was struck by how different the question felt when I said it plainly. I didn't need a cheerful speech about making the most of every day. That would quickly become another impossible standard. I was trying to notice what made a day feel inhabited. Sometimes it was a conversation. Sometimes music. Sometimes the pleasure of solving a practical problem that had been nagging at me. The common thread wasn't that everything went smoothly.
A life can be busy without feeling alive. I had known days full of activity when my attention was somewhere else, waiting for the next obligation. And I had known quiet stretches that seemed larger than the clock suggested because I was genuinely interested in what was happening. I didn't want to count only the years I had left; I wanted to notice the life available inside them. The thought was both sobering and surprisingly inviting.
Happiness sounded like such a sensible goal that I had rarely questioned it. Yet the word could seem strangely flat when I tried to describe the pleasure of following an idea that excited me. I could be worried about something and still feel deeply engaged. I could have an ordinary, unspectacular afternoon and feel wonderfully alive.
That distinction made room for a much larger range of human experience. I didn't need to demand cheerfulness from myself before I could recognize a good day. Curiosity, tenderness, even an honest encounter with something difficult could make the day feel inhabited.
There was no escaping the arithmetic. A life doesn’t become less finite because I have another idea, another project, or another question I would like to explore. But the awareness didn’t arrive as a demand to be gloomy. If anything, it made the ordinary moments feel more available. I wanted to notice what genuinely brought me alive while I still had the chance to notice it.
I had spent enough of my life asking whether I was doing the sensible thing. Sensible matters. Bills matter. Commitments matter. So do the people who depend on us. But I could feel a difference between a day that had gone smoothly and a day in which I had felt genuinely engaged. The second might have included uncertainty, frustration, even a mistake. Being alive in my own life wasn’t the same as being comfortable in it. I was learning to take that distinction seriously without turning it into a dramatic promise to change everything by tomorrow morning.
When I began naming the things that drew me in—making something, understanding something, helping someone, playing with music or an idea—I saw that many weren’t especially restful. Some left me tired. Some demanded patience. Some involved risk or the possibility of disappointment. Yet they carried a kind of satisfaction that an easy day didn’t automatically provide. I began to think that the question “What would make me happy?” was only one part of a larger conversation about what was worth being awake for.
When we are younger, time can feel like an unlimited credit account. Later. Someday. I will do that when things settle down. I will become more myself when I have more time. Then age quietly changes the question. Given that my time is finite, what is actually worth doing with it? Not what is safe. Not what looks impressive. Not what other people would understand. What is worthwhile? When I looked at the things that made me come alive, they were rarely the easiest things. Building something meaningful. Discovering a principle that made life a little more coherent. Helping someone genuinely move forward. Creating music.
Writing. Programming. Photography. Following some odd little question because I could not stop wondering where it went. Trying to understand human nature. Meaningful engagement. That phrase mattered. A pleasant day can pass almost unnoticed. A deeply engaging day can leave you exhausted and still feel full. Happiness asks, How do I feel? Aliveness asks, Am I fully engaged with being here? Those are not enemies. Another paradox. I like being happy. I am not campaigning against comfortable chairs.
