I am participating in #Trust30 which is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Today’s prompt, on top of being a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, is imagining you have 15 minutes to live.
15 minutes? This type of timeline makes me think of Joplin right now. Yes, there were warnings of the impending tornado touchdown. Does that mean the warning is enough? We are all dying a bit each day. A sad statement but entirely true. I think I would prefer to not know when death is coming, just that it is. To know that it is happening is not something I can pull into the way I live. I like to see the half-full glass, not the cannot fill up glass.
After I got over the initial shock of writing about death – my own as I know I have written about others who have died, I realized that my attitude that I live by would carry through to dealing with my own death. I would not worry about what was going to happen in 15 minutes. I would worry about what would happen after that time.
My thoughts went to my children. Granted all of them are in their 20′s now but one, yet I still wanted to tell them all the things I would as they grow older and have the major changes that happen in life.
- Move a lot when you are younger and do not have family or other ties to bind you to an area. See what is out there.
- Enjoy people. We are all humans and to sustain our life we need human INTERaction. We NEED more people in our lives – real, live people.
- Enjoy what you do. If you are working doing something that you do not enjoy, this job is going to become an issue in your life. Find what you love and do it!
- Document your life as much as you can. You all know I do it. I have tons of words and photos that have been a part of my life and will continue to but you need to document your lives.
- Take the faith that you were taught as you were growing up and make it yours. I did as a 20-something. You need to. Faith will sustain you through the bumps in life. I am not saying you need a faith that is like mine. You need your own faith so take what you have learned as a foundation and find your faith.
June 1st, 2011 at 3:30 pm
What a sobering thought experiment. Like you, the idea sent my thoughts right to my kids – who would care for them, what advice I might want to give them.
I especially like the last point on your list; I identify with the idea of personalizing one’s faith and it’s something I’m still working on.