During a recent conversation with a good friend, I referenced my biggest lesson learned last year while enduring the many deaths, losses, illnesses, and tragedies: take nothing for granted and act while you have the chance.

We were speaking in regards to a friendship I had recently re-established after years of being estranged, and my desire to be able to revive another similar situation in which after having had a falling out last year, we hadn’t spoken since last October, and all forms of communication had been cut.

As I thought about a great many things over the course of this week, I decided to take a deep breath, and try reaching out to see if we could get together to talk. Life is too short, and far too uncertain to allow rifts to broaden, and to let words go unsaid. Opportunities to mend broken friendships should not be squandered.

And so I hope, with every fiber of my being, that this friendship can be saved. Too much time has already passed, slipping forever into the ether. All we can do now is try to make the best of the moments which remain, and cherish them as the priceless commodity they are.