I’m getting CaringBridge updates on two different people who are deep in the fight with cancer right now. One who I believe will win and one who, it pains me to say, I’m not so sure about…and, you know, it feels totally arrogant to even mention the way I feel about any of it because I’m sitting safely on the sidelines…and yet, well, it’s my blog, so I suppose that makes me a tiny bit arrogant from the outset.
My first instinct to being confronted with the mortality of people I care about is to embrace carpe diem. No day but today! Live each day as if it's your last! Right, and then you realize that just in case this day isn’t your last, you should probably go to work.
I suppose it’s the same struggle as always, just slightly more narrowly focused for a moment: How do you find meaning in life? How do you make a difference, leave a mark, or make a contribution to the world that you will one day leave behind? What do you want people to remember about you?
I suppose my 40 by 40 list is an attempt at committing to doing what’s important to me…albeit over an eight-year span. Isn’t it just a little presumptuous to make such a list?
If I found out today that I had a week or a month or a year to live, would I run out and do all of the things on that list, or would I hunker down with my husband and my precious babies and attempt to absorb a lifetime’s worth of joy? Would I attempt to journal every bit of motherly wisdom that I’ve been assuming I had decades to impart? In Ireland, perhaps?
It’s so easy to look at it and say that it’s all about priorities, it’s all about following your heart, but we all know that sometimes priorities and heartstrings collide and we’re not always enlightened enough in that moment to make a decision we might be proud of for eternity…
My first instinct to being confronted with the mortality of people I care about is to embrace carpe diem. No day but today! Live each day as if it's your last! Right, and then you realize that just in case this day isn’t your last, you should probably go to work.
I suppose it’s the same struggle as always, just slightly more narrowly focused for a moment: How do you find meaning in life? How do you make a difference, leave a mark, or make a contribution to the world that you will one day leave behind? What do you want people to remember about you?
I suppose my 40 by 40 list is an attempt at committing to doing what’s important to me…albeit over an eight-year span. Isn’t it just a little presumptuous to make such a list?
If I found out today that I had a week or a month or a year to live, would I run out and do all of the things on that list, or would I hunker down with my husband and my precious babies and attempt to absorb a lifetime’s worth of joy? Would I attempt to journal every bit of motherly wisdom that I’ve been assuming I had decades to impart? In Ireland, perhaps?
It’s so easy to look at it and say that it’s all about priorities, it’s all about following your heart, but we all know that sometimes priorities and heartstrings collide and we’re not always enlightened enough in that moment to make a decision we might be proud of for eternity…
Sometimes we just make the decision that gets us through the day. And that’s okay, sometimes. Because it has to be. I guess we just hope that over time, we make more of the right decisions and less of the wrong ones, and that slowly, but surely, we steer our lives to the place that we want them to be.
3 comments:
Thanks for this reflection. You have no idea the timing behind it, as we face a health scare ourselves.
Jason, I hope everything turns out okay for you guys.
I have a friend who I met online, she has cancer. She also has two small children. It tears me apart to think about what her life is like and what goes thru her mind.
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