Almost 40 years ago, I worked in a pharmacy in Miami Beach where the average age must have been over 65 years old. Here I was in my early twenties living and working among people thrice my age unknowingly gleaning knowledge from their experience as to what my own life might become.

Something odd happened periodically in that old drugstore. Along the front window inside the store, there was a long bench where customers waited for their prescriptions to be filled. In the morning, the sun usually shone brightly through that front window and once or twice a month, one of the waiting customers would keel over on the bench. Now and then, a poor soul would die before the ambulance even got there. I learned how fragile life is.

The vivid memory of people periodically dying on that bench in the drugstore serves as an important reminder in my own life to make today count while I still have the chance…