Someone I know is going on a cruise.
Not for celebration. Not for escape.
But because a doctor looked at her dear friend and said, “There isn’t much time.”
Surgery might buy a month.
Chemo, maybe two.
So instead of more hospitals, more waiting rooms, more fighting —
the advice was simple: Go now. Enjoy.
And that question has been sitting with me ever since.
If we were given an end date —
etched clearly on a piece of paper, no smudges, no maybes
what would we do?
Would we fight it?
Schedule appointments, negotiate with time, bargain with fate?
Or would we finally allow ourselves to enjoy without guilt?
Without postponement.
Without saying, “Later, when things slow down.”
I don’t know the right answer.
I don’t think there is one.
But I do know this:
I have lived a full life.
Even with the burnout.
Even with the exhaustion that brought me to my knees.
Even with the days where I was functioning instead of living.
I wouldn’t erase any of it.
Because all of it led me here —
to a place where I understand something I didn’t before:
Life has always been finite.
We just behave as if it isn’t.
So maybe the question isn’t fight or enjoy.
Maybe the question is why we wait for permission —
a diagnosis, a deadline, a doctor’s sentence —
before we choose to live the way we already know how.
I don’t know my end date.
None of us do.
But I know my choice.
When time gives me space,
I will enjoy it.
Not recklessly.
Not in denial.
But deliberately.
Because whether you have decades or days,
time is still time.
And today is still today. And I am now here.
Somewhere between the doctor’s words and the decision to go now,
I hear an old lyric echoing in my head:
we’re here for a good time, not a long time.
“Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet.”
—Sarah Louise Delany