It’s late afternoon and I am sitting on the staircases of the porch. Birds are chirping from afar and I can hear muffled sounds of the busy Gakinjiro up the other hill across the valley. I am washing down the late lunch I had a short while ago with an ice-cold Fanta Citron. I didn’t use to like Fanta Citron or any soda for that matter until I got homesick in college and started to find home in the flavoured carbonated drink at “African” markets. Something about a cold Fanta Citron instantly brings me a child-like joy.
Like often, I am watching the sunset over the hills lost in my thoughts. I have been reflecting on how we often start to urgently live only when we are made aware of the soon-approaching death. The inevitable. We ordinarily run away from death. We avoid talking about it. Countless pray to their most High to keep death away. Given how random our life is, with all the endless possibilities, death is the only sure thing after birth. Death is inevitable, but it is to be embraced as life is frail; it is to be cherished. But it becomes evident, for example, when someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness; or when a loved one dies or even when we go through a near-death experience ourselves. Somehow we come out on the other side with a newfound awareness of how fragile life is and how we haven’t been maximising our time.
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