GOOD MORNING, THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL
Wednesday Aug. 2, 2017
Choose what kind of day you want. They are numbered.
Those of us enjoying apparently good health, without our ‘best before date’, hold some delusion we are immune – that we won’t get sick, won’t fade fast or die far too soon for anyone’s good, most of all our own. And inevitably, before we’ve done what we’ve come here to do, before we’ve had time to say what must be said, waved goodbye to those we leave and depart for whatever stage of dust, afterlife, next life or cryogenic space travel we have in mind, arriving at the end of our journey is something most of us don’t talk about.
Most often we find those who do are ‘diagnosed’ with something, gripped by the finality of life and their shortage of precious time – they want to talk about it, but most of us choose to avoid it as if there is no such thing as a ticking clock …
If we wake up tomorrow. I don’t mean wake up in the normal sense. I mean, ‘if we don’t wake up tomorrow’, where do we see ourselves?
Where will we be, what will our state of existence be?
My religious friends, and those who say ‘I’m not religious, I’m spiritual’ – where do they see themselves?
And my non-religious friends who, like me, don’t believe in an afterlife – we have the same things to worry about, do we not – need to be prepared, need to say goodbye, need to have our affairs in order, need to make the time we have left really count.
Are we awake, clearly seeing backward and forward in our lives with the same clarity, the same skill to analyze what ‘might happen’ as we do when we pore over ‘what did happen’? More than asking which way are we going, how long till we get there – and what will we feel like when we’ve arrived?
Mark Twain wrote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Twain wasn’t writing that for twenty year olds.
He was writing it for me.
He was writing it for you.
Take your age. Add 20. Is it plausible you’ll still be with us?
If yes, get busy.
If maybe, get busy.
If not, get busy …
Reader feedback:
THREE-LEGS, ONE STOOL
I have always been told "you certainly enjoy your own company"!, AW, Corona del Mar, CA
