I'm Shira Erlichman and this is The Slowdown.

Amidst that instability and terror at the very beginning of the pandemic,

there was also the odd and simple question,

how is it exactly that I'm going to spend a single day now?

While my partner and I disinfected our cereal boxes and rinsed onions in the sink,

ambulance's Korean down our street every 20 minutes, wailing.

As we attempted to piece together another day inside,

all around us people were dying, quickly, constantly, and often alone.

The presence of mass death filled nearly every nook of conversation.

For the first time, a culture obsessed with anti-aging and in severe denial of death

was collectively faced with the spectre of our fragility.

In my own private way, I reckoned with impermanence and suffering by reaching for what grounded me.

I rekindled a consistent meditation practice.

I repotted long neglected plants, and I danced in my living room.

A lot.

My daily contemplative practices led me to some existential midnight internet searches.

One night, I landed on a year-long training program called A Year to Live

at an Insight Meditation Center in California called Spirit Rock.

I signed up alongside 400 plus meditators,

willing to conduct a 365-day experiment.

What if I knew I only had a year to live?

Some of our classmates were, in fact, terminal.

...