I wasn’t prepared for tears.

I’ve been a Bond fan my whole life, through the gadgets and quips, the impossible escapes and improbable romances, the martinis and the mayhem, and the beautiful places where the films are shot. I’ve watched Daniel Craig’s Bond evolve from the raw brutality of Casino Royale to the scarred, weary humanity of No Time to Die. I thought I knew what was coming.

But when I caught a rerun of No Time to Die this week, something unexpected happened.

It was M’s eulogy.

Standing in the old MI6 building, he reads a few lines from a 1906 essay by Jack London:

“The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

And I wept.

Not the neat, cinematic tear of a moved moviegoer but the kind that comes when something precise and true lands exactly where it needs to. The kind that isn’t about sadness, but about recognition.

Because those words weren’t just about Bond.

They were about a question I live with every day.

The Weight of Thos Words

On the surface, London’s words are simple. Almost too simple. The kind of sentence that could easily be flattened into a motivational quote and lose all its edge. But placed where it is, at the end of Bond’s story, it does something else entirely. It draws a sharp line between existing and living.

Existing is continuation. Maintenance. Preservation.
Living is engagement. Choice. Risk. Presence.

Existing is staying alive.
Living is deciding how and why.

What moved me wasn’t that Bond died. It was that, in the end, he chose. Fully. Cleanly. Without illusion.

And that’s where the tears came from, not because I felt unfulfilled, but because I felt seen.

This Wasn’t About Regret

What surprised me most was this.

I don’t experience my life as small or postponed.

I feel deeply alive in my work, in my relationships, in the way I move through the world. I’ve taken risks. I’ve made choices that were uncertain, uncomfortable, and sometimes costly. I don’t feel like someone who has been waiting on the sidelines.

If anything, I feel grateful. Grateful for the opportunities life has given me, for the people who have walked alongside me, and for the paths I’ve been able to choose, even when they weren’t obvious or easy.

And maybe that’s exactly why this hit.

Because when you are living consciously, you also know how easy it is, at any moment, to slip into something narrower. Safer. More contained.

Not out of fear, but out of reasonableness.

“This makes sense.”
“Now is not the right time.”
“Let’s not disrupt what’s working.”

And slowly, without noticing, a life that was once alive becomes merely well-managed.

London’s words aren’t a rebuke to those who haven’t lived yet. They’re a reminder to those who are,  that staying awake is its own discipline.

Agency Under Pressure

What moved me most wasn’t the drama of Bond’s death. It was watching someone choose with complete clarity under impossible pressure.

Agency, I realized, is the difference between authoring your life and managing it.

I know how easily I slip from one into the other. From choosing into optimizing. From living deliberately into living carefully.

Once you see that shift, you can no longer hide behind circumstances, roles, or expectations. Not because they disappear, but because they stop being convincing. Your choices become yours, along with what follows.

Bond’s final choice aligns with who he has become. A man who knows what he stands for, and what he will not betray, even for his own survival.

That level of coherence is rare.

And it asks something uncomfortable in return:

Am I that clear about what I stand for?

Would my choices, under pressure, reflect who I actually am, or who I think I should be?

Longevity Is Not the Same as Life

We live in an era obsessed with longevity.

Optimize health. Reduce risk. Extend runway. Preserve options.

All understandable. All sensible. But longevity, on its own, is a thin ambition.

I’ve watched good people optimize themselves into lives that are long and narrow. They’ve preserved everything except the thing that makes preservation worthwhile.

You can live long and never fully choose.
You can be careful and never be brave.
You can preserve everything except meaning.

Survival asks: How do I stay safe?
Living asks: How do I stay true?

Those questions lead to very different lives.

And the uncomfortable truth is this: you can do both,  BUT only if you’re paying attention.

The moment preservation becomes the dominant value, something subtle contracts.

Purpose Is Revealed Under Cost

Purpose has been over-polished. It’s become language instead of practice. Branding instead of behavior. Real purpose only reveals itself when something is at stake.

I’ve learned this slowly: purpose clarifies not in moments of success, but in moments of friction, when choosing what matters means letting go of something else. When survival and integrity pull in different directions. When the easy path and the true path diverge.

Most of us will never face a cinematic version of that choice. But we face quieter versions constantly, between speaking and silence, truth and harmony, protecting our image and protecting our integrity, comfort and cost.

Purpose doesn’t live in mission statements……..It lives in these moments.

Sacrifice, Reframed

A fully lived life requires sacrifice,  not heroically, but structurally.

You can’t have every option open and be committed.
You can’t stand for something without standing against something else.
You can’t live deeply without losing certain comforts.

Sacrifice isn’t a failure of life. It’s evidence of choice.

What undid me in that scene wasn’t the spectacle of death. It was witnessing someone at peace with the cost of their decision.

No bargaining.
No fantasy escape.
No false hope.

Just presence.

This is my life.
This is my time.
This is how I use it.

I want that level of coherence, not the dramatic ending, but the clarity that precedes it.

Why I’m Writing This Now

Today, my daughter turns 32.

And as I sat with those words from Jack London, and with Bond’s story, I realized this piece isn’t really about a film at all.

It’s a wish.

Not that she lives longer.
Not that she stays safe.
Not that she avoids mistakes.

But that she lives.

That she uses her time.
That she chooses, even when it’s uncomfortable.
That she resists the pull toward a life that looks good but feels contained.

That she learns, earlier than most of us do, that managing a life is not the same as living one.

If there is anything I want for her, it’s this:
a life that feels inhabited from the inside.

To Use Our Time

I don’t know how long I’ll be here. None of us do.

But I know this.

I don’t want to merely exist.
I don’t want to manage risk and call it wisdom.
I don’t want to survive everything except my own life.

I want to use my time.

Fully. Imperfectly. Consciously. Humanly.

And maybe that’s why London's words undid me.

Because they weren’t asking about Bond’s ending.

They were asking about mine.
And about hers.