Actually, I think about death all the time. I find it hilarious when someone says “if I die…”, like that, using “if”, as if there were an alternative. It seems like people believe that if they say “when I die…” death will get closer to them, simply because they admitted that they are mortal. Simply for thinking they can die. As if death depended on us.
I think about death a lot, but that doesn’t mean I’m melancholic, or depressed. Death is a deadline and I want to be sure I did my homework before the deadline arrives. We are all going to die eventually, and we must be sure that “when” it comes there won’t be too many regrets to make things even worse.
However, as I said in the beginning, when a long trip approaches and, especially, if it involves air travel, I intensify my thoughts on death. I’m afraid of flying, yet it is not stronger than the desire I have of traveling. That’s why I keep traveling. But I am afraid of plane crashes and the possibility of being in one of them.
In this time of the year, in the weeks that precede a trip, I start to mentally say goodbye to people, to places, things… I think that that could be the last time I drink some Mate tea under the sun on the couch in my living room, that could be the last time I pat my cat while he squeezes his eyes, that could be the last time I hug my mother.
But, as the title says, thinking about death so intensely can be a good thing. The mental farewell before traveling only makes the return happier and more intense. It is so good to hug my mother after a trip, with so much to tell her. Having a Mate tea in the living room after unpacking is one of the best sensations in the world! Patting my cat, that is exceptionally affectionate with me because he missed me is so comforting…
Writer Margaret Atwood once said: “I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it”.
Atwood knows what it is to live with mental deadlines. It is not scary, or a symptom of a pathology, it is a sensible way of acknowledging your own mortality and knowing exactly what you want to do before it comes. For, my dear friend, it will come.
Atwood is 75 and is still writing. Recently, I turned 30 and I’m going to visit another country on my bucket list…
Let the next deadlines come!
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For the Portuguese version, go to Diario Lirico de Viagem
