In the short experience that I have been accumulating as a student and nursing professional, in the temporary and practical work that I have done, I have come to realize that the only essential and indispensable requirement to die is to be alive.
Often, especially when one is young or healthy or everything is going well, we feel very strong, capable and successful. In short, self-sufficient.
However, if we stop lying in what is our existence, if we are sincere, or if some misfortune beats us and awakens us as a bucket of cold water, we realize that our life hangs but a fine thread.
I have heard, and I have even witnessed that man or woman who were completely healthy and whose lives vanished in a heartbeat. I've been with that lady who sent herself to inject a vitamin complex that I do not know if it ended up taking her to the next world, to the other world, or at least to her doors, thanks to a microorganism that lodged in her muscle and began to decompose it in lifetime. I met the young professional whose life died out under the weight of a venereal disease; and the child who after a pain in his chest took him to the doctor, he was diagnosed with leukemia, he became complicated, he was admitted to the ICU, and in less than a week all the illusions that existed about him fell to the ground.
I could keep remembering cases and cases, but it would be useless if we did not realize that our lives are short, that we should take advantage of every moment, where every breath is a gain that we should invest well.
Every breath and every new minute of life is gain. We should be grateful to the God who gives us life and recognize that we are not able to maintain ourselves in existence by ourselves, although from time to time, very foolishly, we create ourselves very strong. There is reason in what the ancients said: Mors certa et incerta ("Death is certain and uncertain"). I believe that if each one of us sets out to live differently to those who live as if they would never die and die as if they had never lived, the world would become much better.