If I was Gonna Die Soon These Are the Things I Would Do (Newsletter no. 25)

Not very much creating, more consuming.

-The sun

-Going for walks

-The forest and woods

-The beach

-Music without words, classical music, Chopin, opera, Flamenco

-Soothing sound frequencies

-Meditating

-Breathing

-Showers

-Chatting

-Gua Sha self-massages (seriously, not a plug)

-The simplest food flavors. Dark potato chips, vinegary rice and seaweed paper with maybe a drop of sesame oil? Lacinato kale, collard greens, Baked potatoes with crispy skins and fluffy insides with salted cultured butter and greek yogurt or sour cream. Caramelized onion spaghetti. Aglio e Olio. Tahdig. Jelly and salted butter toast. Salty tangy fatty creamy crispy bitter things.

-Want to feel as clean as possible but I do not care what I look like, I want to feel like floating nothing.

-Reading religious texts of any kind (as long as it was written with intention) to feel connected to something bigger.

There is still so much I want to do in life, but if that’s not possible, I realize there’s not much I want to do at all, I feel repulsed by anything considered productive in the traditional sense, to expand and exercise my mind to be knowledgeable in the typical sense. No fiction, no self-help, nothing concrete and societal. I want to finger the peaceful truth within and beyond me. I wouldn’t mind being a nun. I don’t want to die an exotic beautiful place, I want to die at home and in the meadow in my dreams, rolling green grass hills and valleys with pink flowers.

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And when I feel like I’m going to live a little longer, I feel an appetite to eat and create. Steak, fries, everything nachos, fried chicken. I want to film more, feel an excitement to share, finish that necklace for my friend.

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Do the things you truly enjoy. If you’re going to binge-watch make sure it’s a thoughtfully made series, whether it’s “high brow” or “low brow” as long as it’s not algorithmically produced. Please don’t think of this as a time to just kill time. It’s not in-between life, it is life.

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”In a way, though, the certainty of death was easier than this uncertain life. Didn’t those in purgatory prefer to go to hell, and just be done with it? Was I supposed to be making funeral arrangements? Devoting myself to my wife, my parents, my brothers, my friends, my adorable niece? Writing the book I had always wanted to write? Or was I supposed to go back to negotiating my multiyear job offers?

The path forward would seem obvious, if only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d just spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d have a plan (write that book). Give me 10 years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The pedestrian truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day? My oncologist would say only: “I can’t tell you a time. You’ve got to find what matters most to you.”

I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”
From Paul Kalanithi’s essay, How Long Have I Got Left?