“The greatest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
My father died at the age of forty-nine.
I was young when it happened, still soft, sadness makes you when you are not ready to hold it. I lost so much that I never stopped doing math. Forty-nine years. That’s what he got. Forty-nine years to do everything he wanted to do, become everything he wanted to be and say every word he still had in himself.
I did not leave the land. Not so. I’m not ready for what it means. But life has a way to prepare you, whether you choose it or not.
Years later, one of my loved ones was diagnosed with cancer. Late stage. The kind of diagnosis that doesn’t just change the recipient. It shifts everyone sitting in the waiting room, everyone drives home quietly after that, and everyone who wakes up at 2am does the same horrible arithmetic.
Suddenly, the smallness of normal life becomes unbearable. Suddenly you see with astonishing clarity how much time you have spent on something unimportant.
Last year my grandmother went through. She is old. She lived. And after a while she was no longer here. No warning. No drift, I can be ready. Just immediately, the permanent reality of her absence.
Three losses. Three reminders. And still the loudest alarm came quietly from within.
I turned to forty.
There is something about forty that no one fully prepares you for. It did not come by incitement or crisis. It comes down to a low level of stability that you may not hear when it starts: What am I waiting for?
Because forty are not old. But it is also no longer young in a way that allows you to believe that time is endless.
I look around at people I love and lose, and I know many of them never make it to the sixties. Forty-nine is for my father. And I am sitting here healthy, capable, full of thoughts and dreams and things that I save for later, think about later. Like where I have a guarantee.
It is not.
We learn to live, but no one teaches us to live.
We are taught to wait. To have fun. Responsible first and second live. And so we do. We scroll, we plan, we procrastinate, and we tell ourselves we will do things when things are calm, when we feel ready, when the time is right.
But life does not slow down for your readiness. And death does not check your calendar.
I know this because I almost waited too long to start sharing my writing publicly. I have an idea. I have a message. I have many years of living experience where I know that somewhere deep can be important to others. But I’m scared. Fear what people say. Fear of criticism, judgment and vulnerability of putting my private stories into the world and not knowing how they would land.
And then I thought about my father. Forty-nine years. And I asked myself, if not now, when? If not, what to do?
So I started. Fear of imperfection and uncertainty, but I started. And that leap, a decision to stop waiting for the fear to pass, changed everything. Fear does not pass. You just decide that a life driven by fear is not a life lived.
Life list and how it really works
This is not about great gestures or great re-creation. It is about something calmer and stronger: living intentionally, practicing consistently. Here’s how I do it:
1. Reflective audit
Every month I sit and ask myself honestly: How is my life this month? Am I reading a book that I keep meaningful to read? Did I go for a walk that I promised myself? Am I resting without error? Do I spend real time and not rush with the people I love? This is not to judge myself, but to see clearly where I have appeared for my own life and where I have quietly abandoned it.
2. Who Check-in
I asked myself which one I had not spoken to for some time. Who do I miss? Who deserves more likes than hosting? Who deserves real calls, real conversations and real time connections? Relationships are also part of the life list. Important people are not on any day list. They are on the list now.
3. The little brave story
This is the one who changes everything. I choose at least one thing per season that scares me enough to mean it matters. Not a big jump. Sometimes it’s enrolling in a class, sometimes it’s contacting someone after years of silence, and sometimes it just says yes when all my alertness wants to say yet. The size of an object is not a dot. The act of choosing it over fear is important.
4. Checking out responsibilities responsibly with love
I will be honest: it is not always easy. Some seasons you fall into the trap of next week or next month when things are calm. When that happened, I asked a simple question with compassion, not criticism:
If this is my last chance to do this, am I still waiting? That gentle urgency cut off almost everything. It is not about intimidating yourself in action. It is enough self-love to stop prolonging one’s life.
When your time comes, what will you look for?
I think of my father often. Forty-nine years, half-sentence life. And I ask myself a question that I should ask as soon as possible: When my time comes, what will I look for?
Can I say that I have lived a full, loving life without backsliding and taking risks that call me? Or will I sit with a list of places I have never been to, words I have never spoken, and dreams that I have kept small and safe because I am waiting for the perfect time?
The perfect time has not yet come. But now is here.
You are not eternal. Not on earth, not in this body, nor in the window of life that is open now. And I am not me either. That is not a bad idea. It’s the clearest I know.
So I sincerely ask you as someone who has sat with loss enough to mean it: What’s on your life list? Not when things are settled. Not when you feel less scared. Not in the future you are borrowing.
Now. This breath. The heartbeat. Stop waiting. Start living. Do it with fear, do it imperfectly, and do it in the smallest way possible if that is what you have today, but do it. Because now there is only a guarantor. And the people you lost, the ones who left before you were ready, and before you were ready, they did not tell you to wait.
So do not.
Because this is what I know to be true after the loss of everyone, every birthday reminds me that time does not stand still, every time I choose to show my life instead of procrastination: the sadness of inactivity is worse than the discomfort of trying.
Things you did not do will sit with you longer than unplanned. And the life you choose to live fully, imperfectly, bravely, and on your own terms – that’s worth it to look back.
You do not need a lot of turning points to get started. You do not have to think about it all. You just have to decide quietly and firmly that your life deserves to live now. Not in theory. Not one day. Now.
What is one thing in your life list that you can do this week?
About Tamara
Tamara is a Marketing Manager and Founder Inspire your soul, A place for intentional living, personal growth, and the belief that healing happens honestly at the same time. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, she writes about things we rarely say out loud – how we grow, how we heal, and how we find our way back to ourselves.
