2 - Death.
I turned 40 years old last December and while the stereotypical mid-life crisis of red corvettes and blond bimbo mistresses seems to have eluded me i have never felt more aware of my own mortality. It mostly seems to manifest itself in relation to my son who today is turning 6. I quit smoking 4 years ago because i want to be there for him when he grows up. I want to be there when he gets married. I want to be around as long as i can and yet i can't help doing the age math. When he's 21 i will be 55! Man that's depressing.
I've also begun looking at things with my mortality in mind. For example I'll look at a book and think "I'll probably never read that book again before i die' or " I'll never see that film again before i die." And then I'll think "what a morbid, stupid thing to think." And then I'll proceed to read the book or watch the film as my way to spite Death.
I also think of this quote and it haunts me. It's from The Sheltering Sky a 1949 novel by Paul Bowles.
"Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an
inexhaustible well, when everything only happens a certain number of
times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you
remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so
deeply a part of your being that you cannot even conceive of your life
without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 times more. Perhaps not even that. How many
more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it
all seems limitless."
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