What Proof Do You Have That You’re Really Alive?

Memento Mori

Your heart is beating. Your lungs are working. Your calendar is full. That alone doesn’t prove you’re alive. It only proves you’re functioning. There’s a difference, and this time of year has a way of making that difference impossible to ignore.

Memento mori. Remember you will die. Not as a dark thought. As a clarifying one. Your life is finite, and that fact is meant to change how you live now, not someday. Especially now, as the year winds down and the holidays arrive. When the lights go up and the pace slows just enough for the questions you’ve been avoiding to catch up with you.

So let me ask you something honest. What proof do you have that you’re really alive right now? Not surviving. Not being responsible. Not holding everything together. Alive. The kind of alive you can feel in your body when something actually matters.

Alive shows up as presence. It feels like agency. It sounds like telling the truth without rehearsing it ten times first. It looks like choosing alignment over convenience, even when it costs you comfort or certainty.

Busy doesn’t mean alive. Being impressive doesn’t mean alive. Even successful doesn’t guarantee it. You can check every box, meet every expectation, and still feel strangely disconnected from your own life.

This season has a way of revealing that. Family gatherings. Quiet mornings. Old memories. New tensions. Empty chairs. Full houses. They all ask the same question without saying a word. Is the life you’re living the one you meant to build?

Remembering death sharpens that question. It strips away the noise and exposes how often we postpone the conversations that matter. How often we trade aliveness for approval. How often we tell ourselves we’ll deal with the truth later, as if later is guaranteed.

It isn’t.

When you remember your time is finite, one question rises above the rest. If this chapter of your life were read back to you someday, would it sound like someone who was awake? Someone who knew this wasn’t a rehearsal?

That question changes how you lead. It changes how you love. It changes what you tolerate. It changes what you choose to carry into the next year, and what you finally decide to set down.

You don’t need more motivation right now. You don’t need a new system or a bigger plan. What you need is authorship. The willingness to consciously write the next chapter instead of drifting into it out of habit or expectation. To recognize that, like it or not, you are already holding the pen.

Because the clearest proof that you’re alive is this: you are choosing your life with intention instead of sleepwalking through it.

If this stirred something in you, don’t rush past it. That quiet nudge is awareness doing its job. Let it sit with you. Especially now, before the year turns and everyone starts talking about resolutions they won’t remember by February.

And if you’re ready to slow down, tell the truth, and make one clear decision that honors who you are becoming, let’s talk. Book a strategy call at  CraigZuber.com. Bring the decision you’ve been avoiding. We’ll cut through the noise and find the next step that actually feels alive.

So before the holidays fully arrive, I’ll leave you with this.

What proof do you have today?