1 As a teenager I implicitly felt that my life would continue until a point very far ahead of me. Even though I was exposed to media of other young people dying in tragedies or in war I always viewed the events as things that could only happen to "other people" and not to me. I never thought about an end.
2 But now I feel a little older and much less invincible. I've realized that at any time I could be the victim of a disaster, disease and there would be nothing I could do about it. Fearing for myself scared me horrendously at first: it's made me rethink how further ahead I should plan my life.
3 I'm not going to let mortality stop me from attempting something grand in the future. But I'm not minding spending more time with my parents. They are aging themselves and I don't know how long they will be with me. I've started to spend more time with others around me as I've realized that making someone's day a little bit better could be the last thing I do, or the last thing someone else experiences.
4 Tolkien spins death as a gift from God in his works. Because we have a finite life our actions have consequences as we can't always undo or make right our actions later in life. The choices we make matter tremendously . This is why the 'race of man' has a privileged rank in Tolkien's world over the 'race of elves'.
