Finding Perspective Beginning at the End

I had the opportunity the other day to cut away from work for an urgent 4 hour detour to sit on a bed and talk to a dear family friend (more family than friend) who is literally in engaged in a life and death battle with pancreatic cancer.  Sadly, she is losing.  She, and everyone in her world, knows it and is dealing with the "picking up the pieces" step of whatever process that comes with such catastrophic realization.

As I sat there talking with her, and even now a few days later, I cannot help but appreciate the powerful clarity of perspective that our conversation has brought to my life.  There is something about holding the hand of someone possibly for the last time or looking into the eyes of someone who knows they will not make it to next month, let alone next year.  That something for me was a Tuesdays With Morrie type of experience where I walked away with a resolve to live with my own end in mind and strive every day to build the life I have in my heart and in my mind to live.

Henry David Thoreau said it best when he wrote, "When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived."  I will have a time to die and as I think about what that end will feel like, I feel a drive to get the living end of things done right.  A long time ago, I wrote a few basic premises that I have used to guide my day to day living and when I left my friend I immediately made these words the background on my phone:

• I read and follow the word of God everyday.
• My family, faith, and health are vital to my happiness.
• I plan my day before I start my day.
• I am the one cleansed leper.
• I believe in Christ and I strive to be like Him at all times and in all places.
• I am a builder.
• It is more important to be trusted than loved and I am trustworthy.
• I know that through small things, great things can come to pass and I go about looking for such opportunities.
• I want the title of "friend" on my tombstone.
• I will be and do my best for those who love me because they deserve nothing less.
• I am open and honest about money and I consider it to be a servant, not a master.
• I understand that "life's a journey, not a destination and I just can't tell just what tomorrow will bring."
• I believe that there are "more with us than with them" and that there is truly nothing that is impossible, God willing.
• Becoming the person that I want to become will be accomplished only through the wise control of time, agency, talents, and situations.
• I will not fear, come what may.

My default list disclaimer is in effect with the items on this list as well.  Progress is slow across the board, but I am striving.  Some areas come easier than others but every item is a crucial link in my chain and I am only as strong as my weakest link.  Every day, I seem to be rethinking what this living is all about and experiences that I am being given are teaching me new things about what matters.  I am finding that my faith and happiness are built like a mosaic or a collage of moments that matter most.  It is faces, not places, that matter.  It is about building up the relationships with those around me that will bring me joy, success, fulfillment, peace, and love.  Everything else is irrelevant.

Now reason says that it cannot be that easy.  You know what?  Screw reason!  In my end, I will not care what freaking car is in my driveway.  I will not care what brand of clothes are in my closet.  I will not care how much money is on the good ol' prepaid.  I will care about those that I love.  Did I do right by them?  Did I teach what they will need to know BY THE WAY I LIVED MY LIFE?  Is there lamp in my oil?  Am I going out a conqueror?  Did I express love by word and deed?  Do others know that I knew and had a testimony of truth?  Did I love my neighbor like myself?  Did I seek, find, and share charity?  Did I forgive others?

These are the things that matter and these are the things that I hope will provide me perspective as I live, every day taking a step closer to that day when the night "cometh...wherein there can be no labor performed".  To my dear friend, I would sing (if I could sing) these words:

My old friend, I recall
The times we had are hanging on my wall
I wouldn't trade them for gold
Cause they laughed and they cry me and
somehow sanctify me
And they're woven in the stories I have told
And tell again

My old friend I apologize
For the years that have passed since the
last time you and I
Dusted off those memories
But the runnin' and the races and the
people and the places
there was always somewhere else I had to be
And time gets thin my old friend

Don't know why, don't know why
Don't know why, don't know why

My old friend this song's for you
Cause a few simple verses was the least that I could do
To tell the world that you were here
'Cause the love and the laughter will live on long after
All of the sadness and the tears
We'll meet again my old friend

Goodbye, Goodbye
Goodbye, Goodbye

My old friend
("My Old Friend", Tim McGraw)

Finally, in my mind's eye I picture one of the greatest ends ever and the eternal truths taught in the context of a simple conversation had between good friends, one of which happens to be on the way out.  Go with me, if you will, to Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1887 and to the fictitious rendering of the farewell of Doc Holliday (who ironically died at the age of 36).  You will remember his words (in the movie anyways) to his dear friend Wyatt Earp:

Doc Holliday: What did you ever want?
Wyatt Earp: Just to live a normal life.
Doc Holliday: There's no normal life, Wyatt, it's just life. Get on with it.
Wyatt Earp: Don't know how.
Doc Holliday: Sure you do. Say goodbye to me. Go grab that spirited actress and make her your own. Take that beauty from it, don't look back. Live every second. Live right on to the end. Live Wyatt. Live for me. Wyatt, if you were ever my friend - if ya ever had even the slightest of feelin' for me, leave now. Leave now... Please.


I could not have said it better myself.  Here's to living with the end in mind.