Imagine this: You are sitting comfortably in your favorite chair on a relaxing day, enjoying whatever it is you normally enjoy. An unknown man comes in to your room, slowly walks over and stands before you. He reaches into a satchel slung over his shoulder and pulls out a large, weathered book. Its title and author aren’t visible, but it has tattered edges and covers that seems to have been opened many times. With a slow and purposeful gesture, the person extends the book towards you. “This is your book,” he says. “But before you can open it, there are some rules you must agree to.” Sure, it seems like an odd offer, but for some reason you are drawn, even compelled to listen to his rules.
“One. Once you begin, you must read the entire manuscript cover-to-cover. Two. Once you’ve started, you can’t stop at any point. Three. once you turn a page, you can’t go back and re-read anything. Four. As you read each word, you can’t go back and re-read any paragraph, sentence or word.”
You agree to the rules. With a rush of anticipation, you reach out and grasp the heavy, clearly substantial tome in your hand. The title is embossed on the front cover: it simply says your name and nothing else. Now you are even more curious. You sit back and get settled.
Page one looks familiar. It’s filled with names and dates and details you suddenly and clearly recognize from your life…starting on Day One. The man, apparently spotting the confused look in your eyes, explains further. “This is your life. All of it. From the day you first starting living to your final day. As you read this book, you will surely recall many of your life’s many events and episodes. Some you will enjoy; others you will have wished had been kept out of your memory. When the book ends, so does your life. Read. And remember.”
Now this feels like a trick. You weren’t ready to die…especially knowing it will happen upon completing the book. But then again, who of us expects death?
Still, you have already begun reading, so you must continue. You read stories of accomplishments, experiences, relationships, things that brought you joy and things that broke your heart. You relieved attempts that failed and monotonous daily experiences. In the younger years, you are interested in so many things; you have uncanny courage to try things and reach for new levels–sometimes against the counsel of those around you. As you journey deeper in to the book, days becomes more routine; less filled with excitement or courageous blind steps. But then you realize…you are getting further into the book. The number of pages completed outnumber the pages remaining. Your pulse quickens. You whisper to yourself “Do something!” -–as if encouraging yourself to remember the short time remaining. But in the story, you’re stuck in a rut of routine. You notice that goals and aspirations unmet for a few days have now stretched on into months and in some cases, years. But then you look glanceat the number of pages remaining and gasp: there might not be enough time left to do all those things. Your long term goals have become much longer, your day-to-day life has become much less adventurous and more about meeting the status quo, making money, more money, paying bills, stressing over things you never knew existed as a child.
You keep reading the daily recount, but as you approach the end of the book, you begin to slow down. You realize you are speeding towards the end, so you slacken the pace. You now begin to look at each page not recognizing accomplishments but instead wasted opportunities and missed goals. The pages are growing fewer and fewer. A knot is forming in your stomach. If only the ‘you’ in the pages would see the need to begin doing more––or failing altogether.
With what consideration would you read those final pages if they in fact made up the book of your life? How intently would you read each word? If you remembered that it would never be read again, that your remaining time was ever so short, you’d probably read each word with microscopic concentration.
How do you regard each day in your life right now? Do you go through it with routine, complacency and disregard? Do you pursue intentions and goals for some self-oriented journey that does nothing for anyone but yourself? You may read about times when you touched the life of another person, and what a difference it made for them. Maybe they had a better day, a new way to look at something or perhaps even created a new destiny for themselves–based on what YOU did to help them. But as you read your book, now you wished you had done much more.
Every day we live with the ability to change our destiny! We have the free will to make positive changes, just as we can chose to ignore opportunities or the ability to change. It is so much more comfortable to just keep on doing what we always do. Taking risks and giant leaps are left for “luckier” people who can afford to fail and try something else. So rather than try something, we wither in our tracks.
Roy Batty “Bladerunner” 1982Ridley Scott directed a great Science Fiction movie from 1982 ‘Bladerunner‘ which features a burnt-out cop named Deckard who has been hired to track down rogue synthetic humans called ‘replicants’. In one of the final scenes, he narrowly escapes his own death when a replicant, Roy, actually saves Deckard’s life. Moments later, Roy slowly begins to shut down. As he does, he asks a few final questions regarding life. In their aftermath, Deckard stares at him and says:
“I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody’s life, my life. All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?”
It is inevitable. We are all on a path to the final day we will draw a breath. Ironically, we begin our path the day we are born. None of us know the final day we face. Spending too much time in the past keeps us from getting all we can from the future. How are we living each day? Are we passing each day with the goal of making it to the next week? Are we short-sighted on the pressures of life and the burden of survival? Or are we looking for ways to “suck the marrow” out of every moment we have left? Of course, the big difference in the situation I described above and our “real” life is that we have NO IDEA how many days we have left. So shouldn’t we be living each day as if it was the last one? No regrets, no fear, no doubts? Make today different. Make today the beginning of your new destiny. Make the story of your life a book worth reading.