You’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. You have 5 months to live.
What do you do?
If you’re like me when I am ask that question in school, workshops, or rhetorically like on blog posts like this one, you would plan on living life to the fullest. On fullfilling your dreams. On climbing mount everest (or something equally satisfying). Yes?
I think many of us believe that is what we’d do. When we hear stories about people who are paralyzed, or people with cancer like my mother, or people who are starving in Africa, most of us realize we need to make a promise to ourselves. We tell ourselves we need to wake the heck up and start living our lives to the fullest. We tell ourselves to stop getting upset about the little stuff, and think about the big picture.
And we go out that morning for a good walk. We are thankful we have legs, and we want to put them to use. We think about the story we read about the man who is parapalegic. And we walk a little harder…
We set the alarm clock for 6am the next morning. We are dedicated. If we have been given this blessing of so much time on this earth, we don’t want to sleep it away!
…the next morning…
*BEEP*…
*BEEP BEEP*…
*BEEP BEEP BEEP*…
Shit.
*BEEP*
Goddamn alarm clock.
*BEEP*
ARRRRGH! We dislodge the alarm clock from our bedside table and decapitate it with an arm of fury from beneath the blanket.
Well there goes that perspective.
I’m not trying to be negative, or say we aren’t capable of changing our perspective. But self-help books and courses trying to reframe us by telling us a sad story just isn’t gonna cut it.
I know this because my mother is in pain every day. She can barely sit in a chair without excruciating pain in her lung. I feel so very fortunate to have the body I do. Able and youthful.
But I’m not living every day to the fullest.
Am I a bad guy? No. Am I unnapreciative? I don’t feel like it.
Learning to live in the present is a lifelong challenge. My mother has mastered it, and now she is my teacher.
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