Living Like It Was My Last Day--Part II

Back in November, I published a post about living each day like it was my last. (11/28/13)  That was really about doing things on my "bucket list"--those things I've known for a long time that I wanted to do before I died.  Earlier this week (3/11) I wrote about not putting off those things that we yearn to do.  I firmly believe in the importance of doing those things in life, and I regret that time seems to pass so quickly that whole years pass in a blink without more of them happening.

Last night's movie viewing started me thinking about living each day like it was my last in a different way.  If this happened to be the last day of my life, what regrets would I want to fix?  Who would I want to forgive? What frayed relationships would I want to mend? To whom would I want to say "I love you?"  To whom would I want to thank or express gratitude?  This train of thought opens a whole new set of possibilities of living without regret. 

I've often wondered why it is that people who haven't spoken to each other for decades wait until their final days of life to mend fences and express regrets.  Of how many hours or days of joy have they robbed themselves?  Why is it that all those years during which the pride was so hard to swallow, but when the end is near, those are the people that they want to see, to touch, and to love again?

I have someone who was very special to me for the first 20 years of my life.  I have only seen her incidentally two or three times since then.  We started talking by phone again 10 years or so ago.  I would really love to see her again.  I would crawl on my hands and knees halfway across the country to see her again, but when I've asked she says, "No."  While I know I am responsible for the frayed relationship in the first place, I ache that my olive branches have been spurned.  She is much older than I, and each time we speak I hope that she doesn't die before I see her. 

As I reflect upon it, there are people that have been special to me and with whom I don't have frayed relationships, but as we've moved around the country, I've just lost touch.  If this were the last day of my life, I'd like to have one last conversation, a good laugh, and one final hug. In these days of the Internet and Skype, there is no reason for me not to have that conversation and laugh, although the hug will be a bit more challenging.  Facebook has given us the illusion that if we connect as "friends," we are really connected, but Facebook knows nothing about an afternoon laughing and spinning stories together over coffee.

In the last 15 hours or so since I've been thinking about this other side of the "last day," I've also thought about unspoken or under-spoken gratitude.  It is funny how people have just popped into my mind that I haven't thought about for decades.  I don't know why, but my high school government teacher has just been hovering there.  I would love to thank her for the passion she instilled in me for government watching.  I went on to major in political science, and politics-watching has been my favorite indoor sport for all of my adulthood...and probably before.  I remember impassioned debates with my father, lingering at the dinner table, when I was still in school.  I don't know if she's even still alive, but I think it is time to reach out. 

I think, too, about nameless people to whom I will be eternally grateful, like that college advisor that suggested that he thought I might find another career more satisfying than accounting, a potential job I'd selected because I thought it would always be secure.  After all, we always need accountants, no matter what the economy is.  EEK!  While I completely value those who do this work, it is mostly so I don't have to do it.  I am sure I would have slit my wrists in a few short months.

Writing this blog seems to have the effect of causing me to start a lot of lists, and while I don't always make it through all of them, the intention gets me started.  Sometimes I do make it through the whole list after a few months: this list seems too important not to write.

Living Without Excuses

Living with intention carries with it a corollary: living without excuses. 

A friend of mine jokes "Growing older isn't for sissies."  Neither is living with intention.  Evolving one's soul is serious work, and by its very nature requires abandonment of our normal way of living.  We surrender to what the soul knows it is becoming.  To say that terror may strike in the heart is an understatement.

Living with intention demands that we listen to the heart and not the head.  Doing what we intuitively know is right may be counter-rational to everything we have known, and yet we must.  As our white-knuckled fingers hold who we have been in a death-grip, the heart whispers a love song of peace and joy.  Surrender to who you might be.

I would like to say I have lived without regret, but in truth, there are things that I've had to leave behind that still recall sadness. The somewhat nomadic existence, which has resulted, leaves me envious of friends, who are surrounded with people that have been with them for their entire lives.  Yet, I know I would not have done anything differently, not for a second.

Twenty years ago in July, I sat on the edge of a water fountain eating frozen yogurt in the sunshine.  In an instant I knew that I was to leave the town I'd called home for a decade.  Where was I to go?  A city on the opposite side of the country where I knew no one. Before I arrived, the Universe had littered my path with new friends.  I had apparent means to earn money, but I had faith and I followed...and so did the work.  Characteristic of living with intention is that I had to take the leap before I knew if and how things would work out.  I still have no clue "why?" for those driven by that question.

To say my move was counter-rational may be an understatement.  Some friends in my old home town made up that I'd fallen in love with a man in the new city, and I was moving there to be with him.  They could not make sense that I had just listened to my heart and followed where it led me--a strange city where I knew no one.  They could not begin to understand the terror in my heart as I took to the highway to drive across the country. 

I miss my old friends--part of the sadness, but I do keep in touch with some of them.  But, no amount of gossip or fear of lack of livelihood would have been excuse enough for me to abandon the path being laid forth before me.  Living without excuses, and just letting the chatter of the world fall away. Surrendering to the call of divine love.  That is what it means to live with intention.