Urgency Without Anxiety

Four months ago, I had dinner with a friend.

It was one of those dinners where the small talk falls away quickly. We'd known each other long enough that pretense felt pointless. He asked how I was doing. Not the polite version—the real one.

I told him the truth.

I had lost everything. Not metaphorically—actually. The career I'd built, the stability I'd accumulated, the trajectory I'd been following for years. Gone. What remained was some savings I'd managed to protect, and even that had a timer on it.

"I have maybe two years," I told him. "Two years of runway before the money runs out. And honestly? I'm not quite sure what I'm doing."

He was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that means something is being weighed.

Then he asked: "What if you only had two years to live? What would you do?"

I didn't hesitate. The answer came from somewhere deeper than thought:

"Exactly what I'm doing now."

I didn't realize it at the time, but my friend had handed me the only test that matters.

Not: are you successful? Not: are you comfortable? Not: are you certain about the path?

But: if time were finite—truly, viscerally finite—would you keep doing what you're doing?

Most people fail this test. I know because I've asked it. When you pose the question—"If you only had two years, what would you change?"—the answers come flooding:

"I'd quit my job."
"I'd finally start that business."
"I'd travel."
"I'd spend more time with my kids."
"I'd tell her how I feel."
"I'd stop pretending."

Every answer is an indictment. Every answer says: the life I'm living is not the life I would choose if time were real.

But time is real. It's running out right now, for all of us. The only difference between two years and forty is scale—the mechanism is identical. The clock is ticking. The pages are turning. The book is closing.

And yet we live as if we'd change everything if only we knew the deadline—while ignoring that the deadline exists whether we know its date or not.

Seneca's instruction is not to live in panic. It's to live in truth. To prepare your mind for the end that is certainly coming, so that the life you live in the meantime is the life you would actually choose.

Here's what surprised me about my own answer:

I had lost everything. I was operating with uncertainty. I had two years of runway and no guarantee beyond that. By any reasonable measure, I should have been panicking. I should have been scrambling for safety, for security, for the known path back to stability.

Instead, I was building a library.

Ninety books of classical wisdom, processed and amplified. A publishing press for books that draw from humanity's deepest wells. A project with no guarantee of success, no clear business model, no safety net.

And when asked what I'd do with limited time—I said: this. Exactly this.

The answer revealed something I hadn't consciously known: I was already living as if time were finite. I had already, without realizing it, passed the test.

Not because my circumstances were good—they weren't. Not because I had certainty—I had none. But because the work itself had become the answer. The building had become the meaning. The uncertainty had become, strangely, the freedom.

"Caretake this moment." Not some future moment when conditions are right. Not some past moment you wish you could return to. This one. The only one you have. The one containing uncertainty and fear and also—if you look—the work that matters.

There's a misunderstanding I want to correct.

When we talk about living with mortality awareness, people often hear: rush. Hurry. Panic. Cram everything in before time runs out.

That's not it. That's the opposite of it.

Panic is what happens when you've been ignoring death and it suddenly becomes real. The frantic energy comes from trying to compress a lifetime of deferred living into whatever time remains. It's not urgency—it's regret in action, scrambling to undo decades of postponement.

True urgency feels different. It feels like clarity. Like knowing what matters and giving it your attention. Like being released from the trivial because you can finally see it for what it is.

The night of that dinner, I didn't go home and start frantically working. I went home and slept well. Because the question had revealed something calming: I was already where I needed to be. The urgency was baked into the work itself. I didn't need to add panic to the recipe.

The future will come—or it won't. Either way, Marcus says, you'll meet it with the same capacities you have today. Worrying about it doesn't prepare you. Living fully today prepares you.

This is the calm at the center: knowing that the deadline exists, accepting that you cannot control its date, and choosing to live today in alignment with what matters most.

Two years of savings. That was my runway.

Some people, hearing that, would see only limitation. A countdown. A timer on the bomb. They'd feel the pressure to "figure it out"—to find the safe path, the reliable income, the return to stability.

But runway isn't just limitation. Runway is also permission.

Two years to build something that matters. Two years to write books that might outlast me. Two years to amplify the wisdom of ninety classical texts and make them available to people who need them. Two years of undivided attention on work that feels, in some deep way, like what I'm here to do.

Most people with stable jobs and endless tomorrows never get that. They never get the forcing function of limited time. They never get the clarity that comes from knowing the clock is visible.

In a strange way, losing everything gave me something invaluable: the inability to defer.

I couldn't say "someday" anymore. Someday was no longer available. There was only now, and the work, and the time remaining—however long that turned out to be.

The limitation isn't distressing—my estimate of it was. And I had the power to revoke that estimate. To see the runway not as a countdown to doom but as a gift of focused time. To see the uncertainty not as chaos but as the space where something new could grow.

Let me tell you what "exactly what I'm doing now" means.

I'm building a library. Ninety books—and counting—of humanity's deepest wisdom. Not summaries. Not cliff notes. The actual texts, amplified with tools to help modern readers understand and apply what's there.

I'm writing books. This one you're reading now. Others that are taking shape. Books that draw from the library, that try to translate ancient wisdom into modern urgency, that aim to help people live better before their time runs out.

I'm building a press. A channel for these ideas to reach people who need them. A way to extend the chain that brought Seneca and Marcus and Thoreau to me, so they can reach others through me.

Is it working? I don't know. Will it pay the bills? Not yet. Will it outlast me? Impossible to say.

But here's what I know: if I only had two years, this is what I'd be doing. Not because it's safe. Not because it's certain. But because it's aligned. Because the work itself is the meaning. Because when I imagine reaching the end, I don't see regret about this choice—I see satisfaction that I spent the time on something that mattered.

That's the test. That's the only test.

So let me ask you what my friend asked me:

If you only had two years to live—what would you do?

Don't answer quickly. Sit with it. Let the reality of limited time settle into your body, not just your mind. Two years. Seven hundred and thirty days. That's it. That's all you get.

What would you change?

And then—the harder question: Why aren't you doing that now?

If your answer to the first question is different from how you're currently living, you've found a gap. A gap between the life you're living and the life you'd choose if time were real.

That gap is where regret lives. It's where deathbed sorrow comes from. It's the space between who you are and who you know you should be.

But here's the gift: you can close it. Not by changing the clock, but by changing what you do with the time you have. You can start living the two-year version of your life right now, today, this afternoon.

You could leave life right now. Not in two years—right now. This sentence could be your last. This breath could be final.

Let that—not paralyze you, but orient you. Let it reveal what matters. Let it strip away the trivial and the deferred and the someday. Let it show you what you'd do if time were real.

Then do that.

I want to tell you something counterintuitive.

I have never felt more secure than in this season of complete uncertainty.

That sounds like a paradox. It's not. Here's why:

When you have stability, you have something to lose. The fear of losing it colors everything. Every decision is weighed against the threat of destabilization. You build your life around protecting what you have rather than creating what you want.

When you've already lost it—when the stability is gone and the runway is visible—a strange freedom emerges. There's nothing left to protect. There's only what to build.

The security I feel now isn't external. It's not in a bank account or a job title or a predictable future. It's in the alignment between what I'm doing and what I believe matters. It's in the knowledge that if I die tomorrow, I was doing the right thing today.

That's a security no external circumstance can provide or take away.

Joy derived from yourself. Security found within. Stability rooted not in circumstance but in character, in purpose, in the alignment of action and value.

This is what mortality awareness offers: not just urgency, but peace. Not just the pressure to act, but the clarity about what action matters. Not just the knowledge that time is limited, but the freedom that comes from no longer needing to protect an unlimited future.

That dinner was four months ago.

Since then, I've processed more books. Written more chapters. Built more of what I set out to build. The runway has shortened by four months, as runways do. The uncertainty remains.

But the answer to my friend's question hasn't changed. If anything, it's deepened. Each day of work is a day of confirmation: this is what I would do if time were finite. This is where I'd place my remaining attention. This is the bet I'd make on my remaining days.

I'm not saying my path is your path. The library I'm building, the books I'm writing—these are mine. Your "exactly what I'm doing now" will look different.

But the test is universal.

The question my friend asked me is the question every life has to answer, eventually. The only choice is whether you answer it now, while there's time to act on the answer—or later, when the answer becomes only a regret.

Answer it now.

And if the answer reveals a gap—close it.

Starting today.