If today was you last day, would you die happy today?
This is not meant as a fluffy question where you go out and seize buckets of lists or yell Latin phrases such as carpe diem at the top of your lungs. It is meant more as the first wake up call of the day before we hit the snooze button.
Part of my answer to this question is a site I have hosted since Ground Hog Day 2008.
Click here to sample Die Happy Today. The site embrace wonderful images with quick thoughts. It is meant to be viewed in about 10 to 30 seconds. Then, get on with life.
I encourage you to visit the site and take a quick scroll down the range of posts, enjoy the pictures, and come back every so often to ensure that you die happy today.
Here is the reason this site came into existence:
Why are you writing Die Happy Today? The title came to me on a flight from Winnipeg to Halifax in December 2007. I would have preferred an extra Diet Coke or cookies but the flight on Westjet left me with the question. If the plane crashed, would I die happy today?
This is not a theoretical question as I was a private pilot, took a plane from an incipient spin into a full spin, fell from about 4,000 feet, waited for my life to pass before my eyes – it didn’t happen – and I ended up with about 100 feet to spare from literally going six feet under. I often suppress this especially when I fly but at 54 it is time to unleash the learning.
I want this site to be very useful to you (not to make you afraid of flying) and I also want it to function as a reminder…if this was the last day would I die happy?
If the answer is yes, we are on track and doing well. If the answer is no than we better figure out what we need to do. By the way, happiness to me is not being some goofy looking yellow smiley face, it is a lot more complex than that. We’ll get into that over the next year.
If we are not alive and happy, what are the chances we will be engaged for the work we need to do?
This is awesome. i love it! Funnily enough (word?) i had one of “those days” when you slow things up and contemplate your happiness and everything around you. so perhaps it’s fate i came across this one? haha…all i know is, i could confidently say that i’d be 95% happy if i didn’t wake up. but my wife and cats sure wouldn’t be.
If I die today
Would I try to run and hide
From the icy clutch of death?
Would I stand and fight
To the end of the line,
To the last of my strength?
Would I breathe my last
Quiet and subdued
Allow myself to slip away
Noiseless and unnoticed?
Would you think any less of me
If that was my choice?
Don’t hate the dead, my friend,
For not fighting on.
For you do not see
What awaits them. They do.
They love you,
But they leave you.
And I know,
If I die today,
I shall live on inside you.
Keep me alive.
This is today
For every dream that floats
Discontinued and broken, the eyes that
Stream, seeping through my heart and yours
Joined by the immortality of nude stars
Scintillating within the vapours
Of the potions that my sleep boils
But what of tomorrow?
Where the water parts
And the fervour oozes from my very soul.
Transparent and translucent
Which softness does not contemplate, but
Moves through, hallucinating of the next and the next and the next
Until nothing else calls, except silence.
And that is all I keep with me now.
The scent of yesterday’s
Antagonism. The harsh smile
Flogged into the imprints of my mind.
And what of the sun? Disappearing like my
Mortal sky. The judgements of you are quick and unfathomable
Between rough skin and smooth pain.
All I have is nothing. Pastures of days to come, stretched out
Before Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Raghu,
Wonderful poems and J Money – you are right on the money (and I am sure you have never heard that before!)