alexpgp | Carpe this!

An interesting read from a new find:

The actor James Dean said, “Dream as if you’ll live forever, and live as if you’ll die tomorrow.” There are several popular variations on this quote, and they serve to remind us to pay attention to what we truly value. The finality of mortality endows reality with vitality.

While it can be difficult to figure out what matters most to us even when considering that we might die tomorrow, perhaps it’s easier to notice what matters least. If you knew you’d die tomorrow, what wouldn’t you do? What activities would you definitely not include in your last 24 hours? Work? TV? Email? Web surfing? What people would you not spend even a moment of your last 24 hours with?

How would you choose to experience your last day as a human being? Why not find out? Consider taking one day out of your life to have that experience now — perhaps an otherwise empty Saturday. Live that day from dawn til dusk as if it were your last. Feel every precious minute ticking by. What time would you get up? What would you eat for your last breakfast? Who would you spend time with? Where would you go? What would you do?

Though I am not planning to check out any time soon, I think this is an intriguing idea.

Forget the weather. What everyone really talks about is how "someday," all the stuff that's really important to them will get taken care of, but nobody ever does anything about it. Hardly.

The level of discomfort I feel now, simply tapping out a post on the subject (and I'm not even going to try to analyze why I feel uncomfortable... at least, not now) is probably a hint that, for me, figuring out how to live a day as if it were my last would not exactly be a "gimme."

I should probably let this simmer in the background for a while, because discomfort or no, it is a curious notion.

Cheers...