This "most wondrous thing." A gift or a curse?

What is the most wondrous thing? All around us people can be dying and we don't realize it can happen to us.- Joan Halifax

Having survived two near-death experience as well as an armed robbery, it has become impossible for me to shed the specter of death. Not a single hour of the day goes by that I do not consider my mortality and the impermanence of the world and the people around me.

Literally.

My impending doom never leaves my thoughts.

It is what drives me. Propels me forward. Forces me to consider how I have spent every minute of my day.

It is also what saddens me the most in this world.

Joan Haliax is right. How wondrous it must be to live a life unaware of the omnipresence of death.

And yet how blinding it must also be to live a life unaware that it could and will end at any moment.

If given the choice, I am not sure which I would prefer.