Ever since my mom died, I started to see life differently. I've said that a million times and yet each time I find something that takes me back to it, to remind me of the day my life changed forever, and sadly, it's starting to make me look a bit crazy.
Back in uni, I used to have this friend who was brilliant in mathematics, whatever it was we brought to him, from algebra down to calculus, he would crush it, he was that good. And this dude happened to be a really close friend of mine, so we always sat next to each other whenever we had tests or exams, but funny enough, I always tried not to copy from him whenever we had any of the calculation courses.
And this wasn't because he didn't know what he was doing, like I said he was the best, but I realized that whenever he was in his maths zone and was doing his maths calculations, he wasn't himself. Sadly I got to find this out the hard way during our first year exam, but whenever this dude was solving mathematics, he always did it like a mad man, like a scientist so close to figuring out time travel but has little time left to do it.
So during that first year mathematics exam, I had sat next to him and because I knew how good he was, I made sure to copy everything he was doing without even crosschecking it myself, that was how confident I was in him.
But then, halfway through the calculation, he stopped, so I stopped too, and before I could tell what was going on, he had cancelled the whole thing. I almost screamed at the top of my lungs that day. He had cancelled the whole thing and started all over again, apparently he had missed a step and needed to start over.
With no other choice, I did the same thing, I cancelled and started all over, only for him to follow the same steps he had earlier followed. It turned out he didn't miss any step and it was just his crazy math mind playing games with him. If I wasn't copying from him in an exam as serious as that, I probably would have got up and left.
But you see, the way I see my friend with maths is the way I believe people see me whenever I randomly starts to tell them about how short life is and how they really should try to live life to the fullest because no one knows tomorrow.
Funny enough, even I know how crazy I sound sometimes but I just can't help it. Whenever I think of this topic and try to talk to someone about it, I automatically just find myself not properly articulating my words. I might be crazy, but I guess what matters is passing the message across.
You blindly trusted him in case of it and I would not do the same thing if I were you. I have seen some genius like you mentioned but I was always confident on myself. I don't like to follow the path of others.
I have a friend who lost his parents and elder sister. The event brought a mindset shift to him. Like you, he would also admonish living one's life to the fullest since no one knows tomorrow
Sorry for your loss
Hmmm, life is full of mysteries