How do you select a single moment from a lifetime of moments? There are a lot to choose from. Stuff happens. First words, first steps, first birthday, first girlfriend, first beer, first love, first sex, first marriage, first child, first divorce, first breakdown, first funeral. We measure life’s firsts with exuberance and excitement – until it’s time to measure our lasts.

When you get to the age of last moments, you begin to look back at things, ploughing through fields of memories, trawling through oceans of thoughts, searching cabinets full of half-remembered names and places, drawers of mis-remembered emotions and long forgotten deeds. Did I live well enough? Did I do well by the people I loved? What will be my legacy? Regrets and ruminations fuse with satisfaction and contentment, forming a giant synaptic fatberg of thoughts in your head. A clear conscience is a wonderful thing at this age. A guilty one, a cesspit of vipers that bite long and hard into the dead of night.

Looking back at your life is like remembering a rollercoaster ride you went on. You know you should have opened your eyes and allowed the thrill of it all to engulf you. You should have soaked it up and laughed in the face of it all, but somehow the fear was all too much and you simply clung on for dear life. This is what blinds us. Fear is the fog that blackens the rays of sunshine around your heart. It steals your joy and puts placards of perturbation in its place.

As I said, there are so many moments, and yet there are no moments at all. But the moments I choose, are ones that quieten the storms in my mind and quicken the blood in my veins. The ones where I stared hard in the face of fear and rode the rollercoaster of life without tension and trepidation. The moments where I think ‘I can’t believe I did that’.

I hope you can say that too.