TOD 09.21.07

I was recently listening to the Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, whose stories I love. He was telling one about a bartender explaining to another woman that getting cancer was great for her because it forced her to change her life and start doing what she’d always wanted to do. This seemed to help the other woman, who worried she had cancer, but it really made me think about the advice and the situation.

How would I live differently if I thought I only had a short time to live, like a year? Honestly, I wouldn’t change much at all. I do work that matters to me, I spend time with my family, and I have a lot of fun. I might sleep a little less and spend the extra time writing. But, then again, maybe I wouldn’t. See, I long ago realized something that this woman wasn’t quite saying out loud: we are all dying. And this means that we are dying for something, namely whatever we use our life to do. The only question is whether we are dying for something worth dying for.

So if you would live differently with only a year to go, I encourage you to either start doing so now or else consider the possibility that you aren’t going to because what you say would do in that case might not be all that meaningful anyhow.