Day 19 I will not die an unlived life

While searching online for the fear of the unknown, I came across a short poem. The first line immediately grabbed my attention by its powerful language. I was struck frozen by the elegant word play so beautifully crafted. However, it was its essence that made me read it over and over, while it played and teased with my thoughts. I knew that only a person who has experience true hardship could have ever written such a powerful piece of work that strikes at the heart of its readers.

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.

~ Dawna Markova

Dying is a powerful fear but fading away is what truly scares people. Everyone dies, it is just a time and place, which is why I don’t fear it. It is enviable and therefore unstoppable. To me death is easy; it is what leads up to death that is hard. Life! I fear the resulting accumulated of my life rather than its ending. Some people fear dying alone, being forgotten by history, leaving no family legacy, wishing they had done more, however these all stem from the same root. No one wants to end up with regrets in how they lived their life.

This is the realization that explodes out of the poem. We all live one life, and we have but to choose to live it to its full potential. Through the failures that smack us down to the successes that carry us up, we have a choice to stop living in fear. We are all so powerful and unique yet many remain afraid, thinking of themselves as unworthy, to become successful in life.

For me, the most thought provoking line, “I choose to risk my significance”, makes my mind twist and turn at the unwanted meaning. Amazing, how the poem has me debating myself causing turmoil to my held beliefs. But, I have learn to question everything even thoughts I believed to be true. My fear is that when I die I will be forgotten (4). I want to make an impact, to be remembered. However Dawna, so significantly states, could live without this, being happy as a stepping stone for others and helping them progress along life. This raises a question that should be ask by everyone. What is consider a fulfilled life? Maybe, for me, that of a successful man, a loving husband, a caring father, a heroic citizen, a renown scientist, or a simple man, it is a question for which I do not have an answer yet.

There is one thing for sure, I will not die an unlived life!