On Death & Deferred Dreams
I think I'm no longer sad because we're losing our peers, or even for the fact that we too are perfect candidates for the same fate. What devastates me is how goddamn quickly we forget this reality....
A heads-up about the language: My thoughts on this subject aren't clean or polite. The profanity here is an attempt to capture the internal monologue as it truly is—raw, unfiltered, and urgent. It's the language of a wake-up call, not anger.
For Mummy Eva, Keneth (Kenno), Peter Clever, Jimmy, and Emma. You don't lose people like them without it changing the fucking vocabulary of your life. This isn't an abstract thought experiment; it's a tribute forged in the fire of their memory. And, that memory is a constant alarm against a life deferred.
I think I'm no longer sad because we're losing our peers, or even for the fact that we too are perfect candidates for the same fate. What devastates me is how goddamn quickly we forget this reality. How in those raw moments after loss, I'm so determined to find life's true meaning—its real value, the things we should actually be savoring—yet within days, I'm literally back to chasing what the world demands instead of what my soul craves.
I get sad because it fucking terrifies me that some of the things I'm truly positioned to execute and live fully right now, I've deferred to those mythical "perfect times" that are always just around the corner. The thought that haunts me: What was Jimmy thinking in his final moments? What about Emma? What regrets burned through them—not about how they died, but about how they lived? What dreams did they postpone, what chances did they let slip by while waiting for conditions that never came?
And here's where the real fuckery begins: These were people who seemed to be doing what they loved. They were living. Meanwhile, us cowards still waiting for the stars to align? We could die completely empty. Our dreams buried with us, still waiting for permission that was never needed in the first place.
I'm not really afraid of death itself—it's inevitable, universal, democratic. But I'm absolutely terrified of dying with my dreams still inside me. Of lying there in those final moments, not mourning what I'm leaving behind, but what I never fucking started. The conversations I didn't have. The risks I didn't take. The person I never became because I was too busy rehearsing for a life I thought would begin tomorrow.
Death doesn't scare me. Unfulfilled potential does. Because the dead don't regret dying—they regret not living. Memento mori: Remember you will die. Not as a morbid obsession, but as the most liberating truth you'll ever face. Every sunrise is borrowed time. Every breath is a chance to stop rehearsing and start performing. The perfect moment you're waiting for? It's this one. It's always been this one.
The only tragedy greater than death is a life unlived while we're still breathing.
