A few years ago, during a dark time in my life, I was standing in the shower when I suddenly felt my heart flutter. For all I know it could have been indigestion, but in that moment there was a flash of the end of it all - and with it a question.
What if this is it?
What if this is where everything ends, right here in this shower? What if, in just a short moment, all that will be left of me is a sad collapsed body under a stream of water drowning out my wife’s screams as the camera panned out and the credits rolled?
I told you: it was a dark time.
I heard the answer before the question had even finished:
What a waste.
I stood under the water until it ran cold, those three little words echoing in my ears over and over again.
What a waste.
I knew exactly what it meant. It’s not that I didn’t love my life. I absolutely did. In fact, I always felt I had stumbled my way to one far better than I deserved. Far better than I’d earned. A wife who couldn’t have been better suited for me, a son who I wouldn’t have scripted any differently.
And yet…it felt like I’d wasted it all.
That I hadn’t loved either of them hard enough. That I hadn’t been nearly present enough. That I hadn’t accomplished anything that left a mark.
That I hadn’t moved the needle—at all.
These days, I know better. I know the needle moves moment to moment—that by simply trying to do good, to be kind, to aim at love—no matter how inaccurately—instead of hurt, I was already fulfilling the only duty worth carrying.
But I didn’t have any of that then. Instead, I had Marcus Aurelius—the Roman emperor from 2000 years ago who scribbled little notes to himself about how to be a better human and inadvertently impacted centuries of people.
Standing under that freezing water, I remembered his instructions to himself:
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly.
If I had wasted it all, I told the voice still echoing in my head, there was nothing left to lose.
If I had wasted it all, the damage had already been done.
If I had wasted it all, I was now back at square one.
I turned off the water, took a deep breath, and turned toward the voice that said it had all been a waste.
Okay, I told it, then this is where we begin again.
•
Think of yourself as dead, my friend.
Begin again.
Begin again.
Begin again.
— Will Watson
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