Most persons you have taken for granted, often the most important to us, will have their uniqueness profoundly stamped upon your heightened awareness, especially what their absence might mean to you.

No doubt some will choose to laugh at this rather prosaic exercise. Almost anything worthwhile is unworthy of respect these days. All the old values are not so much in decline as they are in constant ridicule. By far the best way to tell what is good advice in this world is to judge how many people are laughing at it.

Perhaps the best paraphrasing of the current mindset comes from a rather coarse comedy program of years ago with which I have a tenuous connection. In arguably its best episode a main character is exhausted by a teenage sofa oracle’s quips and rejoins, “You work part-time at a pizza parlor and spend the rest of your life making ironic comments about everybody else. Irony is for people who don’t do anything.” Wise words.

Someday the laughing, and everything else, will stop. Either you will be gone or your audience will. And that’s when remorse begins. This is all about helping you avoid that fate now.

Make sport as you will, but indulge my admonition for only one day. Giving thanks—proper thanks and not a passing mumble over a dead bird—on Thanksgiving Day might be the appropriate choice. If you do this, it is guaranteed you will never regret it.

All it takes is fifteen minutes. Set your alarm early. Lie still for less time than it takes to watch the commercial break during a bowl game. Convince yourself of the truth that you are all on your own in this world. Make certain you believe, even for the slightest instant, that all those who love you—or aggravate you—are forever gone.

What you do afterward is entirely your concern. It will have consequences which are always more far-reaching than we assume. Unkind words can echo in your ears long after the speakers have drifted from your sight; so will your words and actions reverberate for others years after they are unrecognizable to you. Mercifully the same resonance holds true of our kindnesses and beneficence.

Above all, if you gain nothing else from this article, know this—your days are passing. Seizing the moment by definition implies a taking. Though it is far from chic to do so today, try giving a moment to someone else. Forgive and be forgiven. Do not be too proud to thank someone for what they are to you and forget the rest. There is no better time to imagine what your future will someday hold.

It is already later than you think.