What a week last week was…

Death was roaming around making it’s presence more evident as it cast itself on people the masses knew. It slammed itself onto the innocent who were standing up to injustice. And it also roamed less publicly into some of my friends’ worlds.

How are you affected by these final interventions? How does it affect all of us as a whole? Are you thinking more about your own mortality?

And, what does that do?

Does it make you feel freer, more able to create and focus, or does it put you into the “deer in headlight” mode and you wonder what to do? Or, do you move into denial after the first shock?

As death creeps closer in, I find myself re-evaluating my own priorities, and examining time. How do I spend it? How do I waste it? With whom do I spend it? If I really knew the exact date of my eminent death, my “dead line”, would I do things a little differently?

In this way, I view “death” as a healthy kick in the pants.

This is not an uncommon discussion and I realize I’m being redundant, however, we humans seem to need constant reminding. We’re a bit stubborn that way.

Two years ago, I watched my close friend die and heard her last breath. A week prior when she was still lucid, she pulled me close and said, “Trilby, I feel like I still haven’t blossomed.”

She was fifty.

Her echoing words continue to propel me toward my desired work.

I listened to a CBC radio interview, last week, with a woman who had been diagnosed with an incurable disease over a year ago, and given 6 to 12 months to live. Her voice expressed, “I’m much freer now, and I know exactly where I want to spend my time.”

She wanted to spend it in her garden close to the earth where she knew she was going.

Fearless was the word she repeated about her current self. “I seemed to live in fear before, and now, nothing can scare me.”

Asked about how it felt to be dying, she answered that she was too busy living to be preoccupied with it. Interesting that she has surpassed the doctors’ predictions already.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Seize the moment. I ask myself, honestly, is my energy going where I want it to?

We’ve seen the question many times before, but I’m going to ask it again. What would you be doing if you knew you were going to die in one year?

This article is not meant to be a morbid one.

For myself, I find a liberating sensation flow through me when I think about being more deliberate with time, and priorities. Nothing like a deathly reminder to get me shifting closer to the creative projects I desire to perform.

Just what am I waiting for? How about you?

No waiting here…