The Test of Mortality

-Floris van Doorn 11-23-25

We only get one shot at this. Even if you’re religious, you will never be the same age as you are now. We were all given the gift of life, you and me, a chance so rare that most of us can’t even fathom not being born. We won the greatest lottery imaginable: the chance to be. We are the universe experiencing itself.

I’ve tried meditating on this, yet I still struggle to comprehend how bizarre it truly is that I was born at all.

But it does give us a powerful framework to live by. You were given life, and now it’s up to you to decide what you want to do with it. Knowing that you will one day cease to exist, what do you want to do in the time you have? Live for money? Live for approval? What will actually matter on your deathbed, the place you will inevitably end up?

Live a life worth dying for

The task, or the test, is to live a life worth dying for. A life in which you know it was yours. A life that only could have been lived by you. This doesn’t mean running off into pure hedonism, partly because our dopamine system doesn’t even allow that. It means becoming who you are, following a calling that is truly your own, taking risks, and sculpting yourself through living.

Write that book. Move to that country. Start that company. You only get to do this once.

Visit your deathbed, see what stays and what turns to ashes.