“The greatest adventure you can have is living the life of your dreams.” ~Oprah Winfrey
My father died at the age of thirty-nine.
I was young when it happened, yet grief softens you only when you are not ready to bear it. I was so traumatized by this loss that I never stopped calculating it. Thirty nine years. That’s all he got. Thirty-nine years to do everything he wanted to do, to be everything he wanted to be, and to say every word that was still left inside him.
I did not give that land. not then. I wasn’t prepared for what it meant. But life has a way of preparing you, whether you choose to or not.
A few years later, a loved one was diagnosed with cancer. Final step. The kind of diagnosis that doesn’t change the person who receives it. This turns out everyone sitting in the waiting room, everyone going home quietly afterward, and everyone waking up at 2 a.m. doing the same horrible arithmetic.
Suddenly, the brevity of ordinary life becomes unbearable. Suddenly, you see with terrifying clarity how much time you’re spending on things that don’t matter.
Then last year my grandmother passed away. She was elderly. She lived. And yet, in an instant, she was no longer here. no warning. No gradual fade out that I could prepare for. Just the sudden, permanent fact of his absence.
Three defeats. Three reminders. And yet, the loudest voice of awakening came quietly from within.
I turned forty.
There’s something about turning forty that no one ever quite prepares you for. It doesn’t come with fanfare or crisis. It comes in the form of a question, slow and steady, that you can’t unlearn once it starts: What am I waiting for?
Because forty is not an age. But this is no longer young in the way that makes you believe that time is infinite.
I look around me at the people I have loved and lost, and I realize that many of them never reached the age of sixty. For my father it was forty-nine. And I’m sitting here, healthy, capable, full of ideas and dreams and things that I keep putting off for later, thinking about for later. As if this was a place I had a guaranteed ticket to go.
It is not.
We learned to survive, but no one taught us how to live
We have been taught to wait. To earn happiness. To be responsible first and survive second. And that’s what we do. We scroll, we plan, we procrastinate, and we tell ourselves that once things are settled, once we feel ready and once the time is right we will do that thing.
But life does not slow down in front of your promptness. And death doesn’t check your calendar.
I know this because I waited almost too long to start sharing my writing publicly. I had the idea. I had a message. I had years of experience that I knew might matter to someone else, somewhere. But I was scared. Afraid of what people will say. There is fear of criticism, judgment, and the insecurity of putting your personal stories out into the world and not knowing how they will turn out.
And then I thought about my father. Thirty nine years. And I asked myself, if not now, when? If not this then what?
So I started. Scared, imperfect, and unsure, but I started. And that leap, that one decision to stop waiting for the fear to go away, changed everything. Fear does not pass. You just decide that a life lived out of fear is not a life lived.
Life List and How It Really Works
This isn’t about grand gestures or dramatic reinventions. It’s about something much quieter and more powerful: a consistently practiced life of intentionality. Here’s how I do it:
1. Reflective audit
Every month I sit down and honestly ask myself: What was this month of my life really like? Did I read the book I set out to read? Did I take that walk I promised myself? Did I rest without guilt? Did I spend real, leisurely time with the people I love? This is not to judge myself, but to clearly see where I am showing off for my life and where I am silently abandoning it.
2. Who checks in
I ask myself who I haven’t talked to in a while. Who do I miss? Who deserves more than liked posts? Who deserves a real phone call, a real conversation and a moment of real connection? Relationships are also part of the life list. The people who matter are not on some day’s list. They are now on the list.
3. The Tiny Brave Thing
This is what changes everything. I pick at least one thing per season that scares me so much that it means it matters. No dramatic leaps. Sometimes it’s signing up for a class, sometimes it’s reaching out to someone after years of silence, and sometimes it’s simply saying yes when every cautious part of me wants to say no right now. The size of the thing doesn’t matter. The act of choosing it over fear is what matters.
4. Romantic Accountability Check
I’ll be honest: It’s not always easy. Some seasons when things calm down you get caught up in the next week or next month. When this happens, I bring myself back to life with a simple question asked out of compassion, not criticism:
If this were my last chance to do this, would I still wait? That gentle urgency transcends almost everything. It’s not about scaring yourself into taking action. It’s about loving yourself so much that you stop postponing your life.
When your time comes, what will you look back at?
I often think about my father. Forty-nine years, life in between sentences. And I ask myself the question I should have asked all along: When my time comes, what will I look back on?
Will I be able to say that I lived life to the fullest, loved without holding back, and took the risks I had to? Or will I be sitting with a list of places I’ve never been, words I’ve never said, and dreams I’ve kept small and safe as I wait for the right moment?
The right moment is not coming. But this moment is here.
You are not eternal. Not on this earth, not in this body, and not in this special window of life that has just opened. And neither am I. This is not a sick thought. To my knowledge, this is the most clarifying one.
So I’m asking you, really, as someone who has suffered so much loss that it means this much: What’s on your life list? Not when things settle down. Not when you feel less afraid. It’s not like you’re borrowing for some future.
Now. This breath. This heartbeat. Stop waiting. Start living. Do it fearfully, do it imperfectly, and do it in the smallest way possible if that’s all you have today, but do it. Because this is the moment you are guaranteed. And the people you’ve lost, the people who left before you were ready and before you were ready, won’t ask you to wait.
Okay no.
Because I know it’s true after every loss, after every birthday that reminded me that time doesn’t stand still, after every moment I chose to prepare myself for life instead of postponing it: the regret of inaction outweighs the inconvenience of trying.
The things you didn’t do will stick with you longer than the things you didn’t do as planned. And the life you chose to live fully, imperfectly, bravely, and on your own terms – that’s what is worth looking back at.
You don’t need a dramatic twist to get started. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to decide quietly and firmly that your life is worth living now. Not in principle. never day. Now.
What’s one thing on your life list that you can do this week?
About Tamara
Tamara is a marketing manager and founder inspire your soul, A space for intentional living, personal growth, and the belief that healing happens one honest story at a time. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, she writes about the things we rarely say out loud – how we grow, how we heal, and how we find our way back to ourselves.
