What if You Were to Die in a Year?

Last night, I wrote this in my journal:

Alas, conservative champion Andrew Breitbart died late last night. He was only 43. The question typically raised by this sort of distress is not helpful in everyday life. "What if you were to die today?" It's an interesting and sobering proposition, but hardly practical in effect. Writing to everyone how much they mean to you, spending the day with your closest companions, a vigil of prayer, a day of dissipation—all may embody a man's ideal for his last day, but none form a pattern to be adopted over the course of his life.

In that entry I argued there is a better question to ask in the wake of such a death.

"What if you were to die in a year?"

Now that is terrifying. If you had a year, or five, or ten, what would you do? How would you scatter the sands of your waning days on Earth? This question is a chaff-burner, if there ever was one. The things in a man's life that are enjoyable but peripheral fade away, leaving only what he values most. That could be most comforting and energizing.

Or most terrible.

The idols of the mind and the heart are nearly imperceptible to the casual observer of life. Yet someone forced to conclude what he will do before the expiration of another year sees all. There is nothing left to hide who you are and what you want.

The death of the energetic Breitbart has compelled me to reevaluate what I'm doing and where I'm going. I don't want to die at 30 and regret it. Indeed, I don't want to regret my death were it to occur at any age.

Living up to that maxim is another matter. Time to go edit my novel.

A bit of pictorial levity: