viva la vida

It requires more courage to suffer than to die. ~Napoleon

My fixation on the shortness of life stems from being a regular witness of death and imminent death. I could say "end of life" but my father once exhorted on his legal writing essay that the original word is preferable over its "first cousin." I don't follow that advice consistently, of course. I remember an event when my father was told "you're lucky" after he divulged that he was just diagnosed with cancer. One would think that saying something like that to a terminally ill person is inconsiderate, but what the person meant was that it becomes the trigger to live life to the full. Short of saying that a hard deadline keeps us on track. In connection with cancer, I had two female tests done about a month ago and I'm grateful and relieved when I recently heard from my doctor a few days ago that everything's normal. My mother's cancer was more aggressive than my father's and commenced at around my current age. Right before this post, I had the chance to chat with my father who was preparing to get admitted in the hospital and I was glad to share some good news. I used to vent in our conversations and later on decided to only bring up either good news or funny mundane things. I hope to encourage you, my dear friends, to live each day with no regrets. Each of the 525,600 minutes per year...as that Broadway musical Rent theme goes "525,600 minutes...525 thousand moments so dear...how do you measure a year...measure your life in love--seasons of love."