Leo Tolstoy: Life-Changing Paths Of Your Life

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Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die-what makes this any different from a half hour?” (Tolstoy 208) Most don’t think about their mortality until something happens that forces them to. It might pass through your mind in some esoteric way but it’s not an everyday event. We might think about life, career, and retirement but not often about actually dying. That’s the way I was until a life-changing event happened to me. I would be remiss if I did not mention that I have cancer. Yes, I have the big “C” in my case Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a disease where only forty percent live five years. Well, to be more precise, I technically do not have it in my system right now due to …show more content…

Many people think that they are in control but that is just a fallacy. I have made many mistakes in my life. Paths that I have taken that have led seemingly nowhere. It may even look like I have wasted some of my life. Once I thought that I wanted children. It didn’t happen that way for me. I am scared enough for my wife let alone having one or several children to worry about if I end up dying.
This forced contemplation helped me to look at life differently. It helped me see attitudes and biases that I have carried with me for years. I have a lot of attitude I am pig-headed and usually think that I am right. The problem is that I tell other people when I think they are wrong. Some would say that I was even cocky before all of this. Today I see that some of this was keeping me from fully understanding and relating to other people. It opened my eyes to the thoughts and feelings of others instead of just thinking about

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