When we treat life, relationships, or even ideas as permanent fixtures, we slip into a kind of cognitive automaticity. The present moment becomes transparent, invisible. But the recognition of potential loss, whether of a person, a season, or even our own mortality, suddenly renders everything vivid and particular.

This explains why nostalgia can be more intense than present experience, why we often love places more when leaving them, why deathbed reflections carry such weight. The shadow of absence doesn’t diminish love; it concentrates it.

To truly live, we must remember we’re dying. To truly love, we must acknowledge what we might lose.
The gratitude that emerges isn’t naive optimism, it’s clear eyed recognition of the extraordinary fact that anything exists at all, including ourselves, including this moment.