To this day, part two

What will you do with your life?

It could end today from a car accident or a year from now from cancer. If you’re not living the life you want, what will you do to change it? What’s important to you? What will be written in your obituary? Is that how you want it?

Everyday for the last seven years, I hear sirens, mediflights, and codes called overhead because people are in trouble and near death. Today, I was looking for the obituary of an acquaintance’s mother, and I just started reading random obituaries. So-and-so, who died at 26 “after a short illness”; So-and-so, who died “unexpectedly after a car accident”; so-and-so, who died “after a long battle with cancer.”

Many of them list their jobs or their club affiliations. And I wondered, as I read, how many of them were content with their lot in life. Were they happy working for the Teamsters? Did they like being a machinist? Were they happy in their marriages?

So many people go through life feeling stuck, dying young from cancer or a car wreck, and all they have to say in their obit is that they were a member of some legion or church and where they worked and who still lives on in their family. We don't see the struggles or the stories between the lines.

Write your obituary. What does it look like? Mine would say: Shannon Miller, 35, unhappily lived in a town that smelled like fried food, praying for snow and working for a company she resented because it took her away from her true loves: her children and her dogs." This is not what I want. If I died today, I'd be pissed. I want to move. I want to live my life to the fullest doing what I love to do.

What I'd like my obit to say is this: Shannon Miller, 35, lived an adventurous life writing books, working as a media production specialist for other animal enthusiasts and touring the alpine backcountry via dogsled. :-)

What legacy will you leave?