Around this time last year, I put pen to paper trying to articulate my thoughts about how and why we form those all-encompassing social contracts with people we have seemingly no business being connected to. I discussed it through the lens of the metaphor of being surrounded by your deathbed. I flatly stated that my New Year’s resolution for 2024 would be blatantly getting myself addicted to the dopamine rush of a budding friendship.
Friends, I hate to disappoint, but I think I wronged myself there.
This year seemed to be about work. My family hates it, my friends laugh at me for finally admitting it, and yet here I am lamenting about it nonetheless. I said in that very same piece that I crave results & outputs, and as fate would have it, guess who got bit by the numbers and pats-on-the-back bug this year?
It was a new feeling to me. Having read that work again after about a year of not having processed it, I almost felt like I’d been slapped across the face by a cold palm and told to wake up. I was a walking contradiction, doomed to my own pitfalls of striving for the same sun that melts wax wings every single day. Even after taking a trip out East to try and relax, and coming back to a destroyed sleep schedule and a steadfast insistence on wasting my days away in the pursuit of instant gratification, it hit me plainly: I’d written about how much I enjoyed the rush of meeting people, doing things, making memories and attachments to places and people around me… yet I hadn’t fulfilled the one thing I had deemed necessary of a piece of work like that.
That little spiral of twisted self-pity led me down another rabbit hole - the widely speculative conjecture of the seven minutes before death.
For the uninitiated, there’s a widespread (mainly urban) belief that, prior to your death, your neurons engage in a final stand of sorts for around seven minutes. Seeing no further use for the electrical potential that operates them every day, they fervently activate, spreading signals like wildfire in a last ditch effort to make the most of everything. Again, it is widely speculated that those seven minutes are the flashbacks people have spoken about forever, the Greatest Hits collection of all you’d done and all you will no longer get to do.
Needless to say, in my current state, I found it unbelievably uncomfortable.
You see, I’d imagine like so many others, after a year such as 2024, I’m plagued with a single question: “how do you sum up a lifetime?” To me, it’s always been a nudge more than that - what do you use to sum up a lifetime? Do you consciously choose? Do you take mental stock of your life as you go and deem some things worthy of seven minutes of not-so-heaven? Is it something we face with great regret, extreme embarrassment, or a deep sorrow for what we will no longer see?
Before long, these questions of the human condition (of which I just know you’re tired of hearing me discuss to no end) can haunt you stupidly fast. In the past few weeks alone I’ve found myself sat awake, far too late at night, convincing myself that I’ve lived a worthy enough life of a tearjerking seven minute recap. The worst part of it all, perhaps, is I’m not sure if I believe myself.
Before this gets too unwieldy and embarrassing, I’m not using this as a soapbox to preach my own self-deprecation. Instead, it’s less about the quantity and more about what I may subconsciously deem to be the quality of these experiences every day. This introspective interrogation wasn’t for the purposes of evaluating if my life was anything to remember; instead, it was about figuring out if the memories I deemed most important were actually as important as I claimed them to be.
I think it’s important for all of us to take an active and engaged stock of what we prioritize every day, and how that impacts everyone around us. It’s one thing to claim you enjoy the finer things in life; it’s another to live that virtue everyday and assume that, when push comes to shove, you’ll have manifested those ideals appropriately. To me, that meant discerning what I actually cared about the most: was it material successes? The people I’ve met and potentially inspired? Those I’ve been vulnerable with, despite my often hesitation to do so? The feelings others have had about me?
We seem to get off on convincing each other that some of these feelings are inherently superior to others. We preach digital sermons on the importance of not caring what others think of us, before sitting back and listening to another about how being loved is what truly matters. We idealize the immaterial, and settle for the material in any case we can. We tell ourselves that it’s not worth the thrill of the chase to find someone you love, and yet, as head meets pillow, we murmur wishes of having done so sooner. All said and done, we are a confused, contradictory, and discombobulated species - one that is hellbent, for some odd reason, on running our rat races as if the pack leader is a prophet.
I think, in doing so, we gain some twisted satisfaction from knowing that we’ll literally carry those memories to the grace, unknowing of how we’ll feel when we’re on our way out. The reality of the matter, I’ve quickly discovered, is that we live that teetering white lie daily; we don’t well and truly understand what’s most important to us until we consider the fact that the last seven minutes may not just be conjecture. The studies quite literally show this - a fair bit of prior work has been performed showing that individuals who go through near-death experiences have a renewed sense of purpose, happiness, and compassion. To me, that means only one thing: you quite literally need to be right up against dying to know what you want to see in those last seven minutes.
Where does that leave us, the mere mortal humans seemingly doomed to a life of internalized insufficiency? In my eyes, I can never be quite sure.
Year on year, we promise ourselves that something, anything, is more important than what we’re currently doing. One year it can be work, the next family, and the next making time for your friends. It’s the very nature of that rat race - we run ourselves into circles and ruts that convince us we’re right where we want to be for a few seconds or so. Hell, we even coined it a term in a mathematics and machine learning: getting stuck in local minima. That global minima, that undying sense of “I did what I needed to,” is so painfully elusive that I can’t give you my typical straight answer.
In lieu of a comforting conclusion, seeing as it’s nearly been a year since I last declared that my 2024 goal was having people around my deathbed (Ed. Note - make sure the people know you’re not actually dying, alright?), it’s only right that I share with you my process for taking stock of what means the most to me in 2025.
Firstly, there’s a quote that really struck a chord with me: “a wagon bench is too wide for just one.” No, it’s not a quote from a reputable scholar, and yes, I got it from a fictional book I read, but I digress. This past year, to me, has taught me the intrinsic value of knowing when you’re lost and doing your best to be found, and there’s a certain joy in that belonging coming at the hands of those around you. Rehashing plenty of the weird soliloquies I’ve written about love and purpose before, I’ve found it increasingly important to surround myself with people who feel like home.
But that’s a lame and drawn out trope by now on my part, you’d likely agree. This year, instead, is about making sure those people are cared for. If I learned anything, it’s that life has a way of flipping those social contracts on their head before you can wrap your head around the changing of the winds. I realize I’ve lacked immensely in the “caring for your friends” department, and I wouldn’t be shocked if some people felt as though I’d used them as a piece of temporary relief for an insecurity or two. Hell, even writing this, I can think of a few examples, and it makes me a tad bit nauseous.
Additionally, I recall a piece of advice I gave someone that I seldom obey myself: “acknowledge gratitude for circumstance.” My instinctive reaction to hearing good news, succeeding in my own endeavors, or anything in between has almost always lately been to congratulate myself on hard work. Instead, I really need to dial in my focus for how the world is well and truly shaping around me. And I don’t mean around me in the self-heliocentric way, but instead that it’s definitely plausible to say that you fell into a good thing. That in itself isn’t bad - what is bad is a bred spirit of complacency where you just assume that these good things will continue to happen whether you want them to or not. In my experiences, this is pretty much on par with laurel-resting, which I happen to hate.
With respect to that, I’d say that my major promise to myself is to realize the value of anticlimax, and accept that “working towards a goal” doesn’t always literally mean just toiling away until I fall into another good trap of circumstance. Life gets boring, life gets dull, but that doesn’t mean there’s any excuse to pump the brakes on caring for my friends and the life I’ve carefully built thus far. Sure, some of that can be my academics or career, but I want to really realize that it’s the people and places around me - many of whom are changing along with the seasons - that I need to pay attention, gratitude, and homage to. That’s something I’m again disappointed to say I’ve been contradicting myself on over this past year, and it’s something I do really look forward to working on.
Finally, while I proudly stand on my soapbox of acknowledging good things, I really want to adopt that “ask her out” mentality (thanks Theo Von). I’ve sat on my hands for too long expecting all that I want to fall into my lap with marginal effort, and I think in doing so I’ve learned to comfortably wear a pair of pretty restrictive blinders that shield me from what I could be and what I could do. I like to think of myself as a remotely confident and extroverted person, but the reality is I have more to do in that department - see: complacency. I think this year is where I really want to bite the bullet and become that confident version of myself that 15 year old me would scoff at; say hi to everyone, say yes to every fun opportunity (even if it seems like a timewaster in the moment), and truly bask in what life has to offer. This one is particularly uncomfortable, because I’m once again contradicting myself; having written about the benefits of being engaged with the world, I am notoriously stagnant in my ways.
As for what I want to see in those last seven minutes, that remains to be decided. I think, at this present moment (acknowledging how quickly these things change), I want to be able to look back on a life where I was allowed to love and be loved. Whether that be loving and being loved by a career, loving and being loved by my unique life experiences, or literally loving and being loved by someone near and dear to me, being able to go to bed at night with that warmth in my heart is something I feel will crop up near the end.
We all crave that satisfaction of knowing the thrill of the chase is over, and that we’ve found something and someone who makes us happy, everywhere we go. Life is a trail, and that wagon bench is well and truly too wide to go it alone. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I framed this as some desperate plea to get over my insecurities and find love - that would be childish - but my real point here is that I don’t think I care what I take to the grave, as long as I loved it and it loved me. If the feeling I have the privilege to feel in my last seven minutes is an unconditional love for something I devoted at least a pittance of life purpose to, I think I can happily shed a tear knowing I’ve done something right.
Until then, who knows? 2026 may bring a whole new outlook. That’s the distinct beauty of the unknown that scares me just a little bit less after writing this - we don’t know when our number gets called and what will be most important to us then. In all, though, I’d like to think so far I’ve built a life that can feel like a warm hug around my body as it ends, with every divine power knowing they played a hand in shaping the life of someone who knew what it meant to harness and execute love towards something they were cognizant of improving on.