Spotted at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication alumni meet, Garima was laughing, catching up, swapping old stories. Six days later, she left us. A severe heart attack.
I knew Garima as a warm, vivacious, former colleague, nine years my junior at journalism school. I was producing an official event that same day and therefore did not have a chance to attend or meet her.
Last month, it was a classmate from school who died of heart failure.
I keep hearing these stories, and I suspect you do too. Not once in a while, as a distant rumble, but with an unsettling frequency that makes you pause mid-sentence and quietly recalculate something.
What, exactly, are we waiting for?
The Truth About Time
I won’t pretend to know the medical reasons behind the rise in such incidents. To speculate without evidence would be irresponsible. But what I can speak to — with every ounce of lived conviction — is what these losses keep teaching me.
Life is not a rehearsal with a proper performance coming later. This is the performance. Right now. This moment you're reading this. It's all part of the one and only run we get. I've written about this before, and I'll write about it again, because some truths need repeating. Not because they're forgotten, but because the noise of daily life slowly buries them under to-do lists, postponed plans, and the assumption that there's always more time.
There isn’t, or rather, we can never know if there is.
What 'Live Like It's Your Last' Means
It’s a phrase so overused it’s nearly lost its edge, so let me sharpen it again.
It doesn’t mean reckless abandon. It doesn’t necessarily mean quitting your job or skydiving every weekend. It means something quieter and far more demanding: stop outsourcing your life to a future date that may never arrive.
Here’s what that looks like in practice for me, and I’d argue, for most of us.
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Stop Postponing What Can Happen Now
Not every delay is unavoidable. Many are just habits or comfort, or a preference for convenience over connection. I had one of those habits.
For years, I refused to meet anyone — friends, relatives, former colleagues visiting from out of town — on a weekday.
Weekends only; it was a rule I held firmly, almost without questioning it. I’d make an exception if I heard news that someone was here only during the week and gone before the weekend. But there were no exceptions for residents in the national capital region.
This week, I broke this rule.
On a Monday evening, I met a group of former colleagues who live here, a plan that had been floating, half-formed, for nearly a year. We could never find a common date. And I was determined to make it happen.
I moved.
It was one of the warmest evenings I’ve had in a while. The kind where conversation flows without effort, where old ease picks up like it was never interrupted. And I sat there thinking: what exactly was I protecting by waiting for a weekend?
Ask yourself the same. That visit to an older relative you keep meaning to make. The family trip that gets pushed to “next quarter.” The friend you’ve been meaning to call, not text, for months.
What is standing between you and doing it now?
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Say It. Show It. Don't Save It for Later.
This one is harder than it sounds. We live in a culture that treats emotional expression as something to be rationed, saved for special occasions, big moments, milestone birthdays. We assume people know how we feel. We assume there will be a better time to say it.
There won’t always be.
If someone has shaped your life, tell them. If you hurt someone you didn’t mean to hurt, apologise. Not when the moment feels right, but before the opportunity disappears entirely.
If there’s a misunderstanding quietly corroding a relationship you value, address it today.
Expressing love or making peace rarely needs a grand moment. It needs only a decision. Even a phone call. Or it could be a handwritten note. The people we lose never get to hear the things we meant to say.
Don’t let that be your story.
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Guard Your Energy Like Your Life Depends On It.
Envy, resentment, jealousy.
Grudges carried so long you’ve forgotten their origin. Negative mental loops that run on repeat without producing anything useful. These are not just emotional inconveniences; they are a slow drain on the one resource you cannot replenish: time.
Every hour spent in bitterness is an hour not spent in joy. Every mental cycle devoted to what someone else has — or what was done to you — is a cycle stolen from what you are building, experiencing, becoming.
Your time on this planet is finite. The number of sunsets, conversations, and moments of quiet contentment available to you is not unlimited. Spending them in the company of envy or grievance is, when you look at it, an extraordinary waste.
This is not a call to spiritual perfection. We all feel these things. But not everyone knows how to deal with them.
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Make a Difference, Starting With the People Around You
There is a particular kind of satisfaction that comes from knowing you showed up for someone who needed you. Not the performative version. The quiet, unglamorous kind.
Sitting with someone in their difficulty, helping without announcement, being present when presence is the only thing required.
Spend time with your loved ones in ways that are actually present. Not physically in the same room while mentally somewhere else, but genuinely attentive and engaged. And if you have the capacity — energy, time, resources, skill — extend that to others.
There is no shortage of people who need what you might have to give. The return on that investment is not monetary. It’s something deeper and far more lasting.
The Thought You Should Carry From Here
The last time you see someone, you won’t know it’s the last time. That’s the brutal arithmetic of unexpected loss. There is no warning, no formal goodbye, no chance to say the thing you’d have said if you’d known.
Which means the only sensible response is to live and love in a way that leaves as little unsaid as possible.
Don't wait for a more convenient moment. Don't save your warmth for special occasions. Don't hold off on that trip, that call, that apology, that Monday evening with old friends.
Because somewhere, someone went to an alumni meet last week and laughed, caught up, and had no idea it was the last chapter.
Live like you know what they didn’t.
This post is part of an ongoing series sharing life lessons from lived experience. Not theory, but truth earned through the people we meet, and sometimes, through the ones we lose.
About Me
I am a thinker at all times. I see, I think. I hear, I think. I read, I think. Every weekend I write. I would love to know what you think.