Every Moment on the Table

I don’t know if eating clean, lifting heavy, or dragging myself into cold water at sunrise will keep my brain from unraveling the way my mother’s has. I wish I did. Watching her slip into Alzheimer’s has been like watching a house you grew up in catch fire—you stand there helpless, choking on smoke, wishing you’d fixed the wiring before it sparked.

The truth? Nobody knows the secret code. There’s no guarantee that swapping fries for salmon, or vodka for green tea, buys you immunity. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you wind up sharp at ninety, quoting books to your grandkids. Maybe you don’t.

But here’s the thing: does it matter?

Because even if it doesn’t stop the thief that is Alzheimer’s, maybe it stops something else. Maybe you dodge the heart attack lurking in the shadows, or the diabetes creeping up behind you. Maybe it’s not Alzheimer’s that gets you—but something you never saw coming. And maybe, just maybe, this stubborn daily fight means you get one more decade of mornings where the coffee tastes like salvation and your kid’s laughter rings in your ears.

And if none of that happens—if fate flips you the bird anyway—there’s still this: the living.

The full-tilt, sweaty, brutal joy of wringing out the days you’ve been handed. Eating tomatoes that taste like sunlight. Smacking a ball across a padel court until your shoulder aches in that good way. Watching your kid splash in the pool and knowing you’ve got the juice to dive in after him. Hugging the people you love so hard they tell you to knock it off. Sitting across the table from your wife, late at night, laughing over something dumb while the rest of the world sleeps.

Isn’t that enough?

We’re all looking for loopholes—some magic bullet to outwit death, to rewrite the script so it doesn’t end. But the real question isn’t whether you can beat it. The real question is: how do you want to feel while you’re here?

I’ve sat in airports and watched men my age shuffle by, bellies pushing out like they’ve swallowed their own anchors, faces gray from years of bad sleep and worse habits. You can see it in their eyes—they’ve already checked out. Written off the second half of life as a slow decline. And maybe that’s the default setting. But what if it doesn’t have to be? What if you could walk through the same years lighter, sharper, awake? That’s not immortality. That’s choosing not to die before you’re dead.

Look—I don’t pretend to know the answers. This isn’t some sermon on a mountaintop. I’m not enlightened. I’m just trying to swim against the current a little longer. Trying to buy myself more mornings where the coffee feels like rocket fuel, more nights where my kid curls up against me and I can actually be present, not just a husk of myself.

And maybe that’s the point. You can’t outwit death. You can’t hack your way to eternal life. But you can make damn sure that while you’re here, you’re really here.

So why am I doing this? Because I’ve seen what it looks like when time runs out and the lights start flickering. And I don’t want to spend whatever days I’ve got left half-alive. I want to burn them. All of them.