Photo Credit: Warren Hardie

It takes something substantial happening in our lives for us to realize that life is short.

I came to that realization three months ago, when I was in Sri Lanka.

I had only been in the country for fifteen minutes — when our taxi came to a screeching halt.

Our taxi driver opened the door to the car and we got rear ended from behind. I looked around to see what was going on, and outside of the left window of the car, I saw a man on the pavement.

He looked like he was in his 20s and he was just lying there bleeding on the side of the road.

Our taxi driver got out of the car to see what was going on, and he came back less than two minutes later and said, “Well I guess he’s dead.”

I had seen this guy on his motorbike pass by us a kilometer back on the road. He was just lying there, his body limp, and he was being carried off of the road and being put in the back of a trunk.

“What do you mean you guess he’s dead” I said, “Is this something common, do people just die on a regular basis here?”

The taxi driver said, “Well he was probably drunk or something”.

It made me angry that this guy was just so nonchalant about death. It didn’t seem to even phase him.

A young man had just lost his life and this guy seemed to show no emotion at all.

It wasn’t the fact that the guy had gotten killed in a car accident, it was more the fact that the taxi driver seemed to be desensitized to death. It was just another person. It was common.

At that moment, I realized that life is short and that something could happen to you at any moment.

If something were to happen to you right now, would you be happy with the life you’re living?

That’s the question I kept asking myself after witnessing this, and it’s a question I don’t think we ask ourselves often enough.