Instead of a guest blogger this week, we are doing a throwback post from our very first Moving Difference year…. yup – 2012.
It seems like yesterday, but the truth is two years has flashed by and we are now here in this moment… the current moment.
If this is your first time reading this post, welcome and enjoy – if you remember it from years ago, then it is a friendly reminder to update your wishes…
And as always, be bold.
Originally posted in July 22, 2012
Let my life speak for itself.
Sometimes in my life, I take on the world and lose. Sometimes in my life, I take on the world and win, all of the rest of the time are a draw.
But it is my life and I live it to the fullest, all throttle and on the fringes just about everyday. There are a lot of things that many people don’t know about me, and that is fine with me. You don’t need to know me to know that I will gladly help you if I can, you just need to know that you can get help when you need it. I live my life as close to no regrets, some mercy, full justice and simple compassion as I can get.
I tell you this because none of us know the future. Card readers, horoscopes even trick knees can only paint what might happen to us each in the future. The future actually lies in us and what we do in our lives to that last moment can speak volumes about our lives themselves.
That is what I want to talk to you about – that last moment. The moment where death happens, where a shell of a body and a soul separate, where you go wherever you are to go and you are gone.
Death- a subject that something happy like the Moving Difference project probably shouldn’t talk about. Wrong! Death, like time, tide and taxes happen. It happens to each of us at some point, and it will happen, you and I can’t change that fact.
So why bring death up? Because in my life, I have known a great number of people that always put off what they should have taken care of today and I still know a few. I know people that are afraid of death, even I am. I know that the only way sometimes with something like death is to meet it head on and deal with it.
Here is the thing: This is a very personal side of me that I am going to share with you. It isn’t easy but if it helps one person out, then it was worth it.
I know that death will happen to me, I don’t know the when and where and I am not certainly encouraging it to come pay me a visit. But I have sat down and I thought about organ donation, about donating my body and about what to do with my remains.
Now stop freaking out – this is important. This is being a moving difference way after I am gone. Taking the hour to think about this, to write down wishes and to have the forethought to face death with a positive is courageous. It is time to be bold.
For me personally, I have decided that if my organs can be used to help someone else, then please take them. I don’t need them at that point and if they help someone else, great! After that, please ship my body to medical students to learn on. Have those future brains of tomorrow poke, test and learn. I can only hope that they find the solutions to the diseases of the world. And after that, cremated me. There is no reason for my whole body to be put in a box and put in the earth. Ashes are just fine. In fact, I am going to have my ashes put in a man-made concrete reef, and then that reef goes out to one of the eroding coast lines to help stop the wave erosion. The fishes and other aquatic life forms get to feed and live in that reef as it protects the shoreline.
For me, there is no reason to be a named slab in a garden of stone. I don’t want people to visit me and put more dead things on my grave after I am gone. It would be a waste, because I am not there. At that point, I have lived my life, and you knew me or you didn’t, either way I probably will not be interested in what kind of flowers you bring. See when I am gone, I am gone, I either did my life right or not. The simple fact remains there are no reasons for me not to have my body go forward to help others – humans or animals or the world.
Let’s face it; no one wants to talk about death. Death of themselves, or a loved one or any one, it is a scary subject. It is a hard subject no matter your beliefs, but it is a subject that should be thought about and discussed. I hope you have the courage to think about it, to discuss it and write down your decisions in a timely fashion.
My decisions are written down and written above. They are extremely personal to me. They are extremely hard to make public too. I share these decisions with you not to make you fearful. I share so that you will stop and think about it. See, I don’t want to leave this life that I have, I love my life, I love many things in it but in that same moment, I know that I will face death someday, so I am going to deal with it and move on. I know that by me taking the time and making these decisions, by thinking about that unpleasant thought of death, I am staying true to myself, to my entire life’s work and even into the future. I am taking away the unknown, and making it a known. I don’t know when that last moment is coming – asleep on the couch; in a hospital; skydiving or whenever. I might be scared out of my mind or laughing, I don’t know. Yet when that last moment of my life happens, I am going to go into it knowing that I have done everything that I could to let my life speak for itself. I am going to go on giving and be a difference even after my death. There is strength and comfort in knowing that death doesn’t have any power over me. Bottom line is even death isn’t going to stop me from doing what I already do every day – be a Moving Difference.
Be bold, my friends, live life to the fullest every day.
Moving Difference 