If you have been given twice the fuel, then you will be expected to go twice the distance. And if you refuse to do so, your life will have been deemed a failure.
I have been taught this lesson many times over the course of my life, but never more so than in September of 2014, when a sequence of events left me laying down upon Death's doorstep.
Following a dinner at a family member's house, I returned home with a feeling of growing digestive discomfort. Over the subsequent hours, it quickly progressed into acute nausea, and I spent the next three days vomiting uncontrollably.
I was unable to keep anything down. Everything I ate and drank promptly came back up. In hindsight, I should have visited the Emergency Room at that point, but I decided against it, presuming the worst of my malaise to have been over.
But there was one complication I had not foreseen: dehydration. It was the dog days of Summer, with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoons, and with each day that went by I became ever more parched. Eventually, I lost so much water that I fainted while walking outside.
I remember at that point gazing up to the sky and thinking: "Well, this is it. Please have mercy upon my soul." I was ready at that point to die. But in a cruel twist of fate, the afterlife was not yet willing to take me.
A family member discovered me lying on the ground, and called the paramedics. I spent the next few weeks recovering from my ordeal, left with far more questions than answers.
In hindsight, my survival makes a little more sense. At that point in my life, I had not accomplished nearly enough to justify the blessings I had received. And my life, had it been terminated at that point, would have been judged as a failure.
In the years since, I have devoted myself to pursuits, both academic and extra-curricular, that I hope make enough contributions to society that I can be remembered fondly for them. And I have redoubled my efforts towards living a life that makes sufficient use of my talents to justify their imbuement upon me.
If you are still reading at this point, then it is my hope that you too learn the lesson I did all those years ago, though hopefully without enduring the same agony I went through.
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