Photo credit: Joshua Ness (theexplorerdad.com)

As a college teacher, I have the privilege of meeting people from many walks of life. You’d think by the time they reached my student age group (adult), it’d be an entirely different ball game, that they would want to be there, and that they’d relish the opportunity to learn.

Often the opposite is true. Weirdly many adult students still hate being in school (even a program they chose, and paid to be a part of), they hate homework, they are lacklustre in their enthusiasm. Not all of them, but many of them. There are probably many reasons for this, but that’s definitely a separate article.

So when you DO get a student who enjoys everything, who wants to absorb all the knowledge they can, who truly loves learning and being there, well it stands out in a big way.

I have a student who is exactly that. A student who started the program with such high hopes and so much enthusiasm!

A single mother who’d broken through cultural barriers and personal struggles to finally go back to school, she was so proud to be there, and it showed. A fitness junkie and bright spark…full of energy, enthusiasm, and a drive to succeed so real it was palpable.

The other students loved her. She was like a magnet. She radiated this energy that just drew people to her and you often found her helping her fellow classmates. She was a dream student.

Then, she suddenly missed a week of school.

It happened overnight

Fast forward two months and she’s been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease so aggressive it’s turned her life upside down. Now she can barely hold a pen. She struggles to keep the brain fog from overtaking her. She struggles to walk. Her hair is falling out in clumps. It’s painful to move. Her joints are so swollen they’ve doubled in size.

She started chemo fairly quickly after her diagnosis, and that brought its own challenges. The mood swings (often called “chemo rage”), the hallucinations, the painful skin. Yes, skin.

When she came to talk to me about her diagnosis a few weeks after treatment had begun and what it meant for her future as a student, you could see how quickly it had all taken its toll. She was tired. Her eyes had lost their sparkle. She was quieter, more careful in her movements.

She was very visibly upset. She wanted this so badly. It was going to help her make a better life for her children…for herself.

Now she could barely sit in the chair in my office.

“Where do we go from here?”

We talked about accommodations that could be made, supports we could put in place. I encouraged her to talk to the program team about her options. I didn’t want her to quit altogether.

She promised me she would. That she would be back. I never saw her again.

As she left my office, though, I reflected on how quickly life can change. How all your best laid plans can be shattered in a heartbeat.

It was in those quiet moments after she left my office, when my heart wept for her, that I thought of several life lessons – lessons I had learned myself over time, but of which I was now so abruptly reminded.

1. Never be so tied to anyone, anything, or any idea so vehemently that if circumstances change you can’t function or adapt.
2. Yes, make plans. But don’t forget to LIVE NOW. You don’t know if you will have a tomorrow, or even what that tomorrow will be like. But likewise don’t be reckless in your living.
3. Stop waiting. Stop waiting for the right time, the right circumstances, the right anything. There IS no right. There will never BE a “right”. You just have to decide to do it. If you want to do it in your very heart of hearts, then just do it.
4. You are precious. Every single bit of you is precious. So please be grateful for everything about you. Because who knows if one day a part of you will be taken away, and only then you’ll realize how much you valued it.
5. But also, don’t be so tied to who you are that you aren’t willing to become anyone else. Evolution of the human spirit and the ability to grow is what makes this life so grand.
6. If there is anything in your life that you are not happy with…stop waiting for it to change or think you will one day BE happy with it. Either choose NOW to be happy or walk away. Life is too damn short and often outside our control… but our choices are all our own.

We all search for truth in our own way, whether it’s through the purpose of life, our place in the world, the meaning of our day to day, how to stay productive, how to accomplish, how to do, how to be…

That’s all the preamble you’ll get today. I’m going to get straight to the point.

The only truth in life is that we are all dying. Right now. In this moment. Yet even when death is expected, it is sudden and shocking. It doesn’t matter if the person who dies is 9 or 90.

We all live lives in varying states of denial of this truth. That death is inevitable but somehow has an age restriction. That we are somehow immune. So we live life as though we have all the time in the world. We will do it later. Tomorrow. When I feel better. On Monday. When there’s time. Next week. When I get a chance.

It’s all an illusion. Those things don’t exist. All you have is THIS moment. All you have is NOW.

Don’t wait until death calls your number to regret all those moments you let pass you by because you thought you had time. You don’t have time. You have now. Just now.

So go. Do. Be. Live. Love. NOW.