Living as though this year was my last...

I've joined a group following Stephe Levine's book, "One Year To Live". The reasons are many. One, close brushes with death close to me in the last couple of years. Two, my own age creeping up on me...52 yesterday. Three, the feeling that I'm "stuck" in some ways and time is running out. Fourth, a feeling that if I were to die tomorrow there would be too many lose ends to feel like comfortably letting go. Fifth, and maybe most important, the realization that I've lived a lot of my life putting off what I really want for "later"....a later I am beginning to realize may never come unless I make it "now".

The premise of the book is a set of exercises and meditations designed to help you live as though you expected your death one year from the day you begin. To think about what things you would do, what things you have left undone, what relationships you need to mend, what things you need to let go.

We began with an exercise about what "wild & crazy" things we would do if we had a year to do exactly what we wished, if money, committments, relationships were no obstacle. My own feeling was a long-supressed desire to travel to my family's roots, to try to understand what my ancestor's lives had been.

I left the meeting thinking hard about that topic. I gradually came to realize that the things that were preventing me from looking forward to a peaceful death were the same things that were preventing me from living the life I actually want instead of the one I seem to have settled for.

Things like inattention to finances, too much distractions from material belongings, a sense of the trivial immediate diverting my attention from getting on with the profound "someday".

So I begin this year with the thought that I will spend this year searching out, and dismantling, the "blocks" I would have to leaving this life without regret. Importantly, I already realize that in preparing for the death best possible I am also going to be planning for the best life possible, should I still be around to live it one year from today.