On Living in the Present, or Please Do Not Get A Medieval Blade In Your Eye

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After a month of waiting my Nerdiest Thing Ever finally arrived. It's a custom-made D&D dice box with a quote that I personally care about and that totally fits the nature of the game, since throwing the dice by definition will end my doubts.

Not long after its arrival, I tried again to search the web for the source of the quote and I think I may have found a source? Wittgenstein said in his book On Certainty that “a doubt without an end is not even a doubt.” I can see myself misremembering / paraphrasing / butchering that quote into mine.

Speaking of nerdy things: a friend of a friend was doing one of those historical reenactments, and somehow he got stabbed by a fucking sword in his eye. It went partly into his skull, so not only will he be half-blind, he also has difficulties talking and may never recover fully. Dude's the same age as me, and just like that, his life got upended.

I also read Paul Kalanithi's When Breath becomes Air this week. It's a posthumous memoir. Paul was on his way to become one of the best neurosurgeons, when he was suddenly diagnosed with cancer. The book feels unfinished because that's what it is, and that's what his life was. Yet he found the strength to remain hopeful - not for a cure, but "for days of meaning".

It's made me contemplate on my own frailty and mortality. About the ol' "live each day like it's your last" adagium. After all, who knows what could happen. But on the other hand, should I really change my approach to life? I spend a lot of time contemplating my future, and mulling over the past, and I wonder if it gets in the way of the present too much.

I know I can't do anything about things like cancer and swords to the eye. But I can work on those days of meaning. And maybe the way to do that is to let those plans and those reflections go for a while. To let go of my doubts about my future, and my doubts over my past actions.

Maybe that's why that quote resonates so much with me.