Lately I heard people talking about the story of someone having or dying from cancer. My own family has a long history of battle with cancer as well, from my dad, grand father, aunt and uncle to my sister now. I am aware of this genetically collective karma that is running in my family. I think about it sometimes but I am not worried about it. Trying my best to take care of myself, I will let my own fate sentence for whatever it will do upon me in the future.

But lately I, sometimes, ask myself if it is better to know how long I will likely to live because I have a terminal disease or not to know and one day I just leave this world.

I would say I prefer to know when I am going to leave.

Definitely, knowing we are dying is like a prisoner knowing he receives a death sentence. I know the waiting for death will eat us alive.

But in the bright side at least we will have plenty of time to say goodbye to everyone we love; we will have time to design our own funeral and to do whatever we want to do.

My last conversation with my sister before I leave Bangkok is to make her realize that the happiness in our life is not measured by the longevity but happiness and the good deeds that we have done for someone we love and people around us. As Buddha says, “People who have lived for 100 years but have never done any good thing to help other people are less valuable than those people who live just one day but do the tremendous good causes for other people.”

Deep in everyone’s heart we are all afraid of separation and the sense of self-non-existent but I think we should take this opportunity and whatever time we have left to enjoy this temporary stage of this grand opera of life. Do whatever we always want to do, spend the most precious time with someone we love and let our worries go and realize that we just all wanderers who are temporarily visiting this world and we do not own this beautiful world.

I think we might end up enjoying our life more than people who do not know the time they are going to leave. I tell my sister, death and age do not go hand in hand like a linear line. The law of uncertainty applies to everything in this universe and it can disrupt this correlation. People who are still young and healthy might die tomorrow by accidents but she might live for another five years.

Moreover, knowing we are dying will make us realize that we are all mortal and we will eventually exit this stage one day. People tend to forget that we are all a tiny and insignificant elements of this fascinating universe, comparing to the age of the universe, we are just like a fire fly that is born today and will die tomorrow. So they tend to get so drunk with life and live like they will live forever by hurting other people around them just to push themselves to the top, destroying our mother nature just to gain the short-term profit and leave the unpayable long-term debt for our great-grand children in the future.

Don’t let the possibility that we are going to die sooner than other people cloud our mind. Just enjoy it. At least knowing we have cancer will make us notice the full moon, smell the fresh air, see the clear sky, fully dive into the beautiful melody of music and feel the elegance of the universe.

I remind her that our life is just a flash of dream. We can take nothing with us when we are leaving this stage. The only things we can take are the legacy of our good deeds or bad deeds. So spend our time wisely and be kind to people around us and mother nature. Leave the footprints of love and happiness to other’s people life whose we have touched.

Just remember everyone’s life will eventually end like sunset, like falling stars, like the drop of water on the leaves evaporating when the sun rises up but the sun will rise again tomorrow, the new stars will be formed and the drop of water will appear at night again.

Life is an eternity. Just remember I will always be there for her.

At the end of our conversation, I give her a very beautiful quote from Bruce Lee’s and Brandon Lee’s inscription on their tombstone when I visited their graveyard in Seattle 2 years ago.

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

For Brandon and Eliza
Ever Joined in True Love's

Tae Athikomvittaya