Non End of Life Decisions
Okay, now I try not to do this very often, but this post may be a bit of a rant. Like most bloggers, before I write, I do a search for words that people are searching for on the net. It isn’t that I am trying to cheat, but I know that if I use the right words, more people are going to read what I have to say. I did a search for “life decisions” thinking about how people need to decide what they want to do with their lives. What I found was that most of the searches including these words were “end of life decisions”!
Are you ready to die now?
Come on! Are you really saying that you are ready to die and you are looking at end of life decisions? I’m not saying you shouldn’t think about it now and then, but should it rank above decisions about how to live?
As I sat out on the deck today, eating lunch and listening to an on line webinar of Lynn Terry’s Elite Forum, I was thinking how nice it was to be in that place at that time. What were you doing at lunch today? If your day was terrible, you might have been thinking about end of life decisions, but I hope and pray that it wasn’t that bad! You were probably wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else, but that’s it!
Do you see what I am saying? You were thinking about life and how you could live it better, how you wanted to live it differently. You were wishing that you could be home, or traveling, or going to the circus, anything other than where you were, but it was all living stuff! You are not in the same crowd as those who search the internet thinking about the end of their life!
Where would you like to be a year from now?
Would you like to be vacationing on some tropical beach? How about sitting in a little cafe somewhere, enjoying a cup of coffee? Wherever it is you would like to be, can you imagine really being there? You can you know. I mean if you wanted to be somewhere very far away that would cost a lot of money and you don’t have any saved up, it might be a stretch, but more than likely it is possible.
What would it take to make that dream come true? What would you have to do to start living the dream you have? For most of us it takes a little thought and some planning, but that is it! It doesn’t take an act of God or winning the lottery to make many dreams a reality.
Where would you like to be right now?
Here is where we start thinking about living and not about dying. You think about living the life you want and where you want to be in life. It might mean changing some things in your free time or it might mean making some major changes. Whatever it is, the decision to live and stop dying a little each day is just that a decision! What will you do about it today?
P.S. Here’s a great book with an appropriate title! 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List
This book is available in Kindle Too! Don’t have a Kindle!!?? Well! Kindle Review: this thing rocks!
6 Responses to “Non End of Life Decisions”
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Thanks Robert! I wish she had not. I can’t imagine what it is like to live in pain and suffering knowing your time is near, and yet we all know that our time is coming. Why not live the best we are able!
Thank you Kathleen for your words, but most of all for the story of your father. It is inspiration to me to continue to live each day!
Good response Steve. The commentor missed the point of the post.
Definitely food for thought. In September my father was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer with the cancer spread throughout his body.
In the four weeks he had left (he passed in early October) he focused on what he could do to make the time left as quality as possible. He was focused on living every day to the fullest rather than when it would end.
Living to the fullest meant sharing time with family, reminiscing on all the wonderful family memories, being in his garden and doing whatever was physically possible.
To share the experience with someone who is on a limited time is a profound experience.
And if we live today as if it were our last, the smallest things become incredibly powerful.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in the shoes of someone who is in pain all the time. And I know that unless we have walked that path we don’t know.
It’s just like when people who did not lose a parent would say they knew how I feel. How could they?
Yet, what I do know is when we are sincere in saying, “Help me to understand,” a new level of understanding is present.
I am certain you are right, Lin. My point was not to belittle the pain that those who are facing end of life decisions have to make, but to encourage those who are not to begin to live! A very close friend recently passed and he spent so much time worrying about how he would die, long before the heart attack that took him was around, that he never lived!
I suppose I could have ranted on my search for “change” and found many sites talking about seeing into women’s changing rooms!
I send you prayers and thoughts of comfort!
I don’t think you’d feel the same if you were as sick and suffering day by night by day, as I and millions of the dying are.