A couple of weeks ago, one of the most unique people in our industry passed away.

A quiet man of incredible volume, Om Malik was the person whose voice traveled only a few feet but always filled the room. He was the first national reporter to write about our little startup Newsvine in 2005, and for that I will always be indebted to him. Om and Rafat Ali were the two writers I could always count on to ask hard questions and keep founders honest when they tried to describe how they were improving the world. His article was hopeful and optimistic, yet balanced, which happens to describe his personality as well.

When I moved to San Francisco in 2012 to work at Twitter, I got to see Om more frequently. He always wanted to meet at Piccino. He said it was his favorite restaurant, but I imagine he had hundreds of others around the world he loved just as much for different reasons.

Om was a loving and well-loved man. Spend 10 minutes thumbing through every single photo in Christopher Michel’s Om The Great and you’ll feel it in your bones. How does a person so prolific in his field find this much time to experience the natural world, surrounded by hundreds of loving friends and even more exotic cameras?

It’s because he knew that the whole point of life is to experience it in whatever way gives you joy and purpose. That wasn’t spending every waking hour working on a startup, attending a tech conference, or promoting himself online. It was putting his best energy into his writing whenever inspiration struck, and then putting his best energy into travel, photography, generosity, and friends at all other times.

If there’s one thing you take from traveling through Om’s life via Chris’ gallery, it should be the importance of getting your priorities in order. Om often credits his heart attack at age 41 with giving him the clarity to re-prioritize his life. Sometimes, we need to experience a moment of mortality like this to remember our days of even drawing another breath — let alone surrounded by friends and nature — are finite. There is no reason that needs to be the case, however.

Any one of us can decide on any given morning we want to live a bit more like Om Malik. A bit more travel. A bit more smiling. A bit more actually connecting with friends instead of dozens of “we should hang out sometime” near-encounters.

I’m starting today.