Many times, an old man has no other evidence besides his age to prove he has lived a long time, but not in the case of a very good friend of mine whose funeral I was recently at… The turnout was absolutely unbelievable, and his eulogy was done by three different people and each one of them was brilliant. Many tears could be seen, and for the next two days we celebrated the life of this great man and many, many stories were told. As I started to ponder my own life… well just read on.

How long have you been alive? Take the years, multiply them by 365, and then by 24. How many hours have you lived?  What do you have to show for all of them? The answer for many of us is “not enough.” We’ve had so many hours that we have wasted and taken them for granted. All we have to show for our time on this planet is rounds of golf, years spent at the office, time spent watching mediocre movies, a stack of mindless books we hardly remember reading, and maybe a garage full of toys. We’re like the character in Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye.”   ‘’Mostly, I just kill time,” he says, “and it dies hard.” 

One day, our hours will begin to run out. It would be nice to be able to say, “Hey, I really made the most of my time on earth.”  It may not be in the form of achievements, money, or status… but in wisdom, insight, and real progress in the things that all humans struggle against.  

Most of us are afraid of dying. But sometimes this fear begs the question, “To protect what exactly?” For a lot of people, the answer is hours of television, gossiping, gorging, wasting potential, reporting to a boring job, and on and on and on. Except, in the strictest sense, is this actually a life? Is this worth gripping so tightly and being afraid of losing? It doesn’t sound like it to me.

What if you could say that you really made something of this time that you had? What if you could prove that you really did live [insert your number of] years? And not just lived them, but lived them fully?  

I’m taking a page out of my good friend's life starting now, he was nothing special, nor was he famous, wasn’t rich, he was just a good man with a big heart, in every single way that one could be, he was there for everyone who just needed something or anything, wouldn’t be nice if we were all like that… 

Have a great month everyone,