And he said, “Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying.”

As I was fighting through the last of my taxes yesterday, trying to get everything together to be ready for the meeting with the accountant, I received a text that stopped me on a dime:

A good friend of mine wrote me and let me know that she was undergoing testing and the doctors have found some disturbing initial results. I can’t go past specifics out of respect for her privacy, but to say it left me cold in my tracks. She’s gifted – beauty, youth, strength…she’s as active as an uber-athlete and sweet as soda pop and the last thing I expected to hear with the out-of-the-blue texts was that she was in the pain she was in.

I didn’t see that coming at all.

It’s still early in the game and she’s a fighter so I’m not going into panic mode yet. At least not today and probably not tomorrow. But it further woke me up. I was already thinking about how average days are incredible opportunities to live and that they should be filled out. It started when Tat posted the following video on facebook about these filmmakers who were supposed to make a video in part of Nike’s #makeitcount competition. They took a twist on it, did a Billy Joe and Bobby Sue and made it count by recording their trip around the world in ten days.

I didn’t need reinforcing

But things seldom come one at a time. They have a tendency to come in twos and threes.

When I heard her story…

A song started back up in my head. I’d hear it in hundreds of cars a week while working at the boat. That’s when it wasn’t pumping through the speakers of lobby. It was unavoidable. And since those cars that played that song gave good tips, it became positive reinforcement and allowed me to overcome the country shortsightings eventually allowing the song to seep into me. It used to get in my head every time it’d play when it first came out. It reminded me of the all the things my life would never have w/ respect to my father. Eventually, it’d motivate me.

And now that song’s in my head again. For all the right reasons. I’m hoping it gets absolutely no incentive to stay in there and that my good friend gets a great diagnosis and treatment, but either way…the list of friends who’d trade places with me in a heartbeat is growing. So I push on out of respect to their friendships. Time is going on. My time on this planet will be over before I know it. The question is: what do I want to have accomplished?

And for the record, the song was Live Like You Were Dying, by Tim McGraw. Here’s the video.

Anybody else ever use this song for inspiration?

photo credit: legdog via flickr

Last updated by Finn at August 4, 2020.