The Certainty We Choose to Ignore

Another flight, another tarmac pause. The plane idles, the engines hum, and my mind keeps wandering back through the last few weeks. We’ve had so many deaths — relatives, neighbours, people from our community. Some were old and expected; one was a young mum, only a few years older than me.

I don’t do well with death. The thought of leaving my children and family — of one day not being there for them — terrifies me. And yet death is the only absolute we pretend we don’t understand.

As I press my forehead to the cool glass, I watch the runway blur and wonder how many people spend their whole lives existing for others — sacrificing their own wishes, shelving their dreams — and in the end they are quietly forgotten. The vacations never taken. The poems never written. The apologies never given. So many postpone living because they believe in a tomorrow that might never come. But who promised tomorrow?

These reflections are more for me than anyone else. If death knocked on my door unannounced today, what would I wish I’d done? Whose life have I brightened? What have I made? The honest answer scares me: in some moments, it’s nothing. Not because I didn’t try, but because I let fear and distraction dilute my purpose until it was a faint echo.

Is a life without a true why really a life at all?

I don’t have tidy answers. I only have a louder set of questions — and a rising urgency. If you’re reading this and your chest tightens like mine does, maybe it’s not too late. Maybe the small acts matter: the call you keep postponing, the story you start, the stubborn little dream you finally protect.

Today, on a plane waiting to leave, I choose to remember that certainty of death not to paralyze me, but to sharpen me. To live with a clearer why. To be braver in the small things. To love louder. To write that line. To go to that place.

Because the truth is simple and terrifying and liberating: tomorrow is not promised. So let’s be purposeful with the time we have.