Wow, thank you for these words. I felt this deeply and can relate in a very similar way.

When I was sixteen years old I had a stroke. It took a couple years to recover from the brain damage. Every misfire and shortcoming of the connection between my body and mind, reminded me how uncertain all our “somedays” are… a multiple-time-per-day occurrence that became nothing short of life-defining for me.

There are many paths to the mountaintop of presence.

Just as Irvine suggests along those Stoic lines, I now carry a coin around in my pocket every day with the Latin words for “remember death” imprinted on it. It keeps me present in the same way, tethered to the profound gift found in what I once thought was the worst thing to ever happen to me. I’m quite into my own little variation of that Stoic practice, here’s my parallel take on it: https://ethanmaurice.com/blog/10-reasons-i-remind-myself-that-im-going-to-die

With great resonance,

Ethan