Fall In Love With Life

Tonight I am sitting in the company of death. Not in fear, but in reverence. Death has become, for me, less a shadow at the edge of life and more a teacher who takes a seat at the table. I imagine her there, quiet but insistent, reminding me with every breath: nothing lasts, nothing is guaranteed, everything is precious.

We so often live as though time is endless, as though our days are pocket change we can spend without thinking. But death interrupts that illusion. It leans close and asks: What are you postponing? Who have you not forgiven? What beauty have you failed to notice because you were too busy? These questions are not accusations; they are invitations.

Alua Arthur speaks of approaching dying with tenderness, ceremony, imagination. adrienne maree brown insists that what we imagine is not indulgence but architecture. Audre Lorde reminds us that silence — about love, about longing, about what matters most — will never protect us. Together, their wisdom forms a chorus that refuses numbness. They teach us to turn toward death, not away, so that we might finally, fully, turn toward life.

When I sit with people — in counseling, in grief, in the shadow of dying — what rises is rarely grand revelation. Instead, it comes in whispers: I wish I had let myself be seen. I wish I had spoken love out loud. I wish I had danced without shame. Death clarifies. It strips away the unnecessary layers and lays bare the heart.

And here is the paradox: to think of death is not to dwell in despair. It is to lighten the load. It is to see how much of what we carry is not ours to keep. Death invites us to set down what no longer serves. It is, in this way, profoundly liberating.

So too is grief. We often imagine grief only as pain, but grief is also a key. It unfastens us from the illusions of permanence and control. It tears through the tidy boxes we keep ourselves in and delivers us, raw and undone, back to what is real. Grief frees us. It loosens our grip on perfection, on performance, on pretense. In grief we learn the holiness of surrender — and from that surrender, a new kind of freedom is born.

Grief cracks us open, and in the cracking we remember: to be alive is already to be on borrowed time. This recognition can devastate us, yes — but it can also liberate us to live unbound. To laugh louder. To love messier. To choose presence over perfection.

And here, I must turn to poetry —
because grief and death are themselves poems:

they break language open,
they demand rhythm where none existed,
they insist we pause,
they return us to awe.

to write of death is to write of life,
to write of life is to write of death.
they are stitched together,
each leaning toward the other,
like two hands reaching,
like two breaths meeting.

If you’d like to begin somewhere, try this:

Ask yourself — if I had one year to live, what would I begin? Write it down. Let it be a seed. Even the smallest vow, honored daily, can alter the course of a life.

To live with death at our side is not to court despair but to live in reverence. Reverence for the morning light across the floorboards. Reverence for the taste of food when you are truly hungry. Reverence for laughter that escapes your chest in the company of someone who knows you. Reverence for the arms that hold you, for the words that mend what was broken, for the moments when tenderness outweighs fear.

And let us not forget awe. The staggering, ordinary awe of existence itself. That we are here, on a rock suspended in space, orbiting a ball of fire, spiraling through a galaxy that is only one among billions. That the same forces that turn the tides and scatter the stars also course through our blood. That the trees breathe out what we breathe in. That every autumn leaf, every bird in flight, every night sky is a reminder: it is astonishing that we are alive at all.

This is the practice: to let death teach us how to live unafraid. To allow grief to free us into deeper intimacy. To let awe remind us that we are not small mistakes, but part of something vast and holy. Endings and beginnings, grief and wonder, earth and cosmos — companions, not opposites.

And so I invite you: do not turn from death. Let it walk beside you. Let grief break you open. Let awe remind you how improbable, how miraculous, how awesome it is to exist at all. Because nothing is promised, and still, here we are — breathing, choosing, capable of love.

Thinking of death is not about endings. It is about beginnings made urgent. It is about freedom born of grief. It is about reverence born of awe. It is about falling in love with life, fiercely and deliberately, while we still have the chance.

With tenderness, fire, and reverence,