One Month to Live

I’m taking a Bible study through my church, Brown Corners UBC in Clare, Michigan. It’s called “One Month to Live,” as in if you knew you only had 30 days left on this earth, how would you live your life? What would be your priorities and goals? What would be your relationship with your family? Friends? God? What and who would be important to you? What would you change and maybe that is how we ALL should live life whether we have 30 days or 30 years.

The passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs  also has taken place during this bible study and there has been quite a bit of commentary on Jobs and his thoughts once he knew he was dying. There is also a YouTube video of a speech Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005 that addresses some of his thoughts on life and death. It was a topic he had recently come to ponder since he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer not long before. More than 11 million people have viewed the 15-minute video, including me.

I didn’t think much of the book at the beginning. The weather was nice, I had other things to do (and read) so I put off starting it, even though each daily read was only a couple of pages and could be done in a couple of minutes. But now I am hooked. I read, I ponder and afterward, I pray. There is a lot of meat in that short book and I have gone from being a reluctant reader to a supporter.

One of the things I like are some short quotes at the beginning of each reading. The other day there was one from author and mountain climber Tim Hansel that said: “Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy.” I thought that was a great quote. Hansel himself lived life in great pain as the result of a climbing accident. Attitude means so much in life.

There was another quote from poet Maya Angelou that I had read a few days earlier, again focusing on attitude. This one said: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

That was the way my father lived, or so how  I seem to remember him. I hardly ever remember him complaining. Me? That’s another story. I’m still a work in progress as I find myself frequently complaining and sometimes wallowing in my misery. But I’m hoping to change all that, along with a lot of other things. I’m hoping to live life as though I have one month to live. Not only will it make for a better life for me and those around me, but maybe it’ll make my friends and family hope I stick around a bit longer.