How many more times can I watch the full moon rise?

Last year, I read late Ryuichi Sakamoto's "How many more times can I watch the full moon rise?". The book taught me a lot of things in the middle of my piano stagnation period.

The title of this book condensed Sakamoto's feelings for fighting cancer.

How many more times can I watch the full moon rise?

In fact, the title of this book is not the words of Mr. Sakamoto himself, but the words of the original author Paul Bowles at the end of the movie The Sheltering Sky, in which Mr. Sakamoto was in charge of music.

Here are the excerpted words from the movie The Sheltering Sky.

“Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.” ― Paul Bowles

I thought about it deeply and realized it's profound. The night of the full moon always comes once a month. But if the weather is bad or if you are not feeling well, you can't see it. Even so, there could be some nights when you can physically see the full moon, maybe 5-6 times a year. But how many times did I see the full moon in the last year? Maybe I've never seen it. Even if I saw it, it was the moon that I would have caught a glimpse of it when I happened to be driving at night. There seems to be always a chance, but I miss that precious opportunity. And I don't even realize that I missed such an opportunity.

Fortunately, I don't have any major health problems for now. I'm spoiled myself complaining that I can't practice the piano during my stagnation period. The title of the book, the original words of Paul Bowles, made me realize that I was wasting my precious time. From now on, every time I see the full moon - I don't know how many more times I will see the full moon, and I don't consciously want to go to see it - every time I will remember the preciousness of time.