by Tiffiney Lozano

This article, Snow Brains struck a nerve with me, as my husband and the father of my children is an extreme athlete. I too, am a born risk taker.  Now that I’m a mother to two amazing humans however, my sense of mortality is real and at times completely overwhelming. But if there is one thing I want to instill in my children, it is to REALLY live while your alive.

There is just one last breath between living and dying, and we never know when we might inhale our last taste of life.  For me the real tragedy is all the people that aren’t really living in the first place.  Those stuck on the freeway twice a day going to a job they hate, so they can return home watch other people living life on their television, buy stuff they don’t need and head to bed so they can do it all over again tomorrow.  Is planning two, MAYBE four weeks of vacation where you get to do what you actually WANTto do, worth all the chasing?  I think we each need to ask ourselves what is the legacy we want to leave behind when it’s all over. What will I remembered for?

People die from obesity, diabetes, car accidents, drug overdoses, cancer, and the fortunate ones of old age.  If you ask those that know they are dying about their regrets, most will tell you they wish they’d done more: loved more, risked more, LIVED more.  There’s a great article here with more on that topic here http://gu.com/p/356tg

But back to the question, “Is it worth the risk?”  Hell yeah it’s worth the risk.  No matter how much we want to make the world a safe place, the fact is that we are all going to die someday.  Am I a proponent to make the world as safe as we can?  Absolutely. However I in no way support the government stepping in to tell me what is and is not safe for me and my family.  I take full responsibility for weighing the factors at hand when I am engaging in some kind of dicey activity.  It is terrible when we lose someone we love, and for a time life doesn’t even feel worth living.  But mortality is exactly what does make life worth living.  It is this realization that has me intentionally choosing how I spend each day, and thus have created this blog.  I need that constant reminder that this is it.

“What is it that you are going to do with the one precious and wild life?” Mary Oliver

My sincere condolences go out to the families involved with this loss.  How lucky those men were however, that they spent their last days and moments doing exactly what they loved most. How many people can say that?

Tiffiney Lozano is a creative non-fiction writer turning her chaos into comedy so she doesn’t criticize and alianate those that love her. A self-help junkee “in process,” the mother of two is in the planning stages of devoting devoting a few solid years to the serious, silly business of educating her children both formally and socially. With her equally crazy Argentine husband, she plans to sail the oceans and use the world as the family classroom.

A reformed journalist, Tiffiney blogs sporadically at www.inspirationstationblog.org and Todovia Tiffiney www.tiffineylozano.wordpress.com/