The Night I Learned Life Can Change In An Instant
Sometimes life changes in an instant.
Late one night, I was driving home exhausted, the kind of tired where your eyelids feel like weights. The freeway stretched ahead in dark ribbons of asphalt. Up in the distance, a single pair of taillights floated steadily in my lane.
I decided to pass. A quick glance over my shoulder, one second—maybe less.
That’s all it took.
When my eyes snapped forward, the car that had been several lengths ahead was suddenly right in front of me. My heart lurched. At 70 miles an hour, instinct took over. I jerked the wheel hard, missing their bumper by inches. Relief barely had time to register before I felt it—my car fishtailing out of control.
Headlights swung back and forth across the freeway like a metronome, until the last thing I saw was the concrete barrier rushing toward me.
Impact.
Metal crumpled. Glass shattered. The airbag punched me in the face with the force of a sledgehammer. My car spun violently and ground to a stop, jammed against the divider, the hood jutting dangerously into the fast lane.
The silence that followed was almost worse than the crash. Dazed, ears ringing, I realized it was getting hard to breathe. White dust from the airbag filled the cabin. My chest tightened. Panic clawed at me.
I forced open the door, stumbled onto the cool asphalt, and inhaled the chilled night air like it was the most precious thing in the world.
Shaking, I reached for my flip phone. My fingers fumbled on the buttons as I tried to dial my parents. That’s when I heard it.
The screech of tires.
Impact.
A pickup truck slammed into the wreckage. The force tore the front end of my car clean off. Debris skidded across the pavement, sparks flashing in the darkness, shards of metal scraping just past my feet.
A few inches closer, and I wouldn’t be here to tell the story.
Up until then, like most teenagers, I thought I was invincible. Bad things happened to other people. Not me. Not here. Not tonight.
But lying there on the side of the freeway, staring at the twisted metal that used to be my car, I realized something I couldn’t unlearn: life is fragile. Time is fragile. And none of us are guaranteed another day.
That night stripped away the illusion of permanence. I saw, for the first time, how little control I had over the time I’d been given.
Life is a gift. Every day, every moment, is borrowed time.
What Memento Mori Really Means
Now, let me be clear—I’m not saying “live like there’s no tomorrow.” That’s terrible advice. If we all lived that way, most of us would make reckless, short-sighted choices that left us worse off.
The Stoics had a better perspective. Memento mori—Latin for “remember that you will die”—isn’t about being reckless. It’s about being deliberate.
It’s not a call to empty your bank account, skip work, and eat dessert for every meal. It’s a reminder to sharpen your focus. To stop wasting your limited time on distractions, grudges, or meaningless busyness.
Because when you remember that your days are numbered, your priorities change.
Urgency vs. Importance
Every day, life gives us a choice:
We can spend our time on what feels urgent.
Or we can invest it in what is truly important.
Urgency is loud. It demands attention through buzzing phones, breaking news, last-minute requests, and the endless churn of to-do lists.
Importance is quiet. It whispers in the background—spending time with your kids, taking care of your health, building something meaningful, practicing habits that shape the person you want to become.
The problem? Urgent things make us feel busy. Important things make us better.
And too often, we confuse the two. We sacrifice the meaningful for the immediate, only to look back years later and realize we traded the hours we’ll never get back for things that never really mattered.
Spending Time vs. Having Time
Memento mori breaks that illusion. It reminds us that time is not something we have—it’s something we’re spending. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.
And every hour spent scrolling, worrying, or chasing busyness is an hour we can’t get back.
The real lesson isn’t to live as if you’ll die tonight.
The real lesson is to live today in a way that, if you did die tonight, you would not regret how you spent your hours.
That’s where habits come in.
It’s one thing to reflect on how fragile life is, it’s another to do something about it. To choose each day to invest in the things that matter most, not just the things that shout the loudest.
That’s the heart of what I’m exploring in my upcoming book, Intentional Habits: Tiny Changes, Huge Impact. It’s not just about breaking bad routines or starting new ones, it’s about learning to create clarity around what matters, showing up with consistency, and staying connected to the people and purposes that make life meaningful.
In other words, it’s about living today so that you don’t regret how you spent your hours.
Final Thought
The night of that crash could have been my last and though I’d never want to relive it, I’m grateful for the perspective it left behind.
Memento mori isn’t morbid. It’s motivating. It’s not about fearing death, it’s about honoring life.
And that’s my invitation to you: to use the hours you already have to live with clarity, consistency, and connection. Tomorrow isn’t promised, but today is here, and it’s yours to shape.
So spend it on what matters most.
