"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living"

Terry Pratchett’s observation plays with the familiar adage that, in the moments before death, people supposedly experience a rapid replay of their entire lives. What Pratchett does is twist this expectation with gentle yet profound humor, suggesting that the vivid procession of memories and moments we anticipate at life’s end is, in reality, already happening throughout the course of living itself.

Life is the ongoing passage of experiences, memories, triumphs and failures, all accumulating, overlapping, and shaping our sense of self. Often, people are conditioned to look for meaning, reckoning, or clarity only at the end, as if the sum total of existence lies dormant until death stirs it awake for a final review. Pratchett challenges this, suggesting that existence itself is the very process of memory in motion. Every moment we experience, every joy and sorrow, every mundane routine or extraordinary event, contributes to a continuous internal story that plays while we are alive.

This perspective invites a reconsideration of how presence and awareness operate. Rather than anticipating a last, hurried montage at the point of dying, acknowledging that life’s memories unfold perpetually encourages a deeper appreciation of the present. Each day is both a lived experience and a memory in the making; we are constantly watching our lives pass before our eyes, day by day, choice by choice.

Pratchett’s lines carry a subtle existential message. Living is not a disconnected series of events waiting to be reassembled at the end, but a narrative constantly unfurling. By reminding us of this, he nudges us toward mindfulness and engagement. The so-called montage before death is not reserved for final moments, but is, quite simply, the act of living, an ongoing parade of small and great things we see, feel, remember, and ultimately become.