OpEd: A Reminder of Life’s Fragility

By Shahar Masori

SAN DIEGO — Sometimes the universe has to shake you to your core before you notice the cracks you’ve been ignoring. For me, that moment came this week, not in a war zone or a protest, but in the sterile white of an emergency room, in the form of a kidney failure scare.

Lying in a hospital gown, hooked to monitors, I realized how much of this year I’ve spent counting losses: the unraveling of a relationship, the collapse of familiar routines, the hollow quiet of an empty home. I’ve measured too much of my life lately by what’s gone, not by what’s left.

But as I stared at the ceiling tiles and listened to the steady beep of a machine tracking my pulse, I felt something else entirely, a jolt of perspective. Health, when threatened, eclipses every other loss. Suddenly, the grief over people or possessions, even the regrets that gnaw in the night, seemed like shadows compared to the light of just being alive.

In Judaism, we are taught to wake each morning with the prayer Modeh Ani, “I thank You.” Not for success, not for riches, not even for love. Simply for the gift of another day. I confess that I’d stopped living in that spirit. I’ve been chasing ghosts, replaying what was lost, as if clinging to it could change the ending.

The ER reminded me that ghosts don’t answer back. Life does.

And so I left that hospital resolved to live more in the prayer I’d forgotten. To honor fragility not with fear but with focus. To invest in health, in stability, in the new life I’m building piece by piece. To see creation as both a burden and a blessing: I have spent the past few months creating like never before, and perhaps that is its own cure.

Loss is part of the human story. But loss is not the whole story.

I don’t know what the coming year will bring, but I know this: life is fragile, and it demands urgency. Live. Love. Accept. Let go of what ails you, even when it’s hard, and invest yourself in those who see you and are there for you.  Because when the universe whispers, or shouts, from the least expected places, the only answer worth giving is gratitude.

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Shahar Masori is an Israeli-American freelance columnist based in San Diego.