Day 21 Question 21:

If you found out you had only one week to live, what would you do in that last week?

I went into the kitchen today and asked my roommate to come up with a question for me to answer in my blog.  He came up with this one.  At first I thought it was kind of cliché and generic and then I realized this was not an easy question to answer at all.  What immediately flew through my head was that I would knock off a bank so I could fly my nearest and dearest friends to me or vice versa but let’s face it, how successful do you think I could be at knocking off a bank?  I can’t tell a little white lie without smirking like a fool.  So, robbing a bank was crossed off the list.  I didn’t want to make the scenario unrealistic either by adding something like having an endless supply of money available.  I wanted to answer this as if starting tomorrow I had only one more week to live.  I could do whatever I wanted based on how my life is at this current moment.  The cause of death is not a factor to answer this question.  Let’s just say I will be in the same health all week as I am today.

Ok so I that gives me 7 days to wrap up everything.  It is easy to say I would want to spend as much time as possible with my closest friends and family…that is obvious.  This would be 7 days of very little sleep because there is a lot I would want to do an accomplish.  I do have some money saved and I would fly my sister, brother in law and nephews to the beach to be with me during this time.  Nothing personal to my sister but I do not want to spend my last days in the middle of the woods in the bitter cold (love you sis).  Wow this question is really hard.  Would I want to plan out my days or just let whatever happen happen?  I mean I am a planner so I am sure that is what I would do.  I am sure others would want to plan stuff too.  I know during this week I would want to be surrounded by as many songs that I have loved throughout my life.  I want to surround myself with everything that has held significance.  I would want to revisit photo albums of childhood and ask my parents to share with me as many memories as they possibly can.  I would want to write letters to everyone I care about and tell them how much I care about them and how wonderful it has been to have them in my life.  I would want to put my writings together and send them to publishing companies-or I would put them in the hands of someone very close to me and ask that my story be told and do whatever they can to get my work published.  I would write every single day, probably for several hours.  If possible, I would fly up to NY even if it is for only a couple of hours and visit the house that I grew up in.  I would ask the people that live there now if I could have a few moments to just look around.  I would soak up all of the memories and re-live my childhood.  I would visit many different places and meet absolute strangers and ask them to tell me their stories.  These last 7 days wouldn’t be about me.  These last days would be about everyone I love and everyone I have or could help in some way or another.  I would have no desire to be the center of attention (even though it would be inevitable considering everyone knows I will be gone in a week).  I would want to do everything I could to make a mark on the world in hopes that I could be a part of making things better even if it is only in a small way.  When I first saw the movie Pay It Forward I was amazed at how genius the concept was.  I would want to Pay It Forward to as many people as I could in that week to hopefully start a Pay It Forward revolution.  Yes that may sound so cheesy and cliché but if you think about what the potential results could be if everyone paid it forward to as little as just 2-3 people, life could be something completely different.  People would start understanding what true compassion and empathy really is.  No I am not trying to come off like I am some sort of Saint.  I am sure I would do some superficial things, like eat an assload of super fatty donuts or ride the Sky Wheel a bunch of times.  I would make sure to add a lot of fun into the mix too.  I just know that I want to make an impact.  I know what is inside of me and I know what I am capable of.  I would want to leave this Earth knowing I did everything I could to make as many people as I possibly could happy.  I would donate everything of mine.  I would ask those that I love to hold onto whatever pieces of me that they wanted.

I find it impossible to map out a plan of what I will do hour by hour minute by minute of my last week alive.  I know that those plans would get completely squashed anyway.  How many times have you gone to work with a complete game plan for the day and within the first 5 minutes of being there that whole game plan gets blown to bits.  Well, realistically, there would be a good chance that the same thing would happen in this situation.  It would be important for me to record a video-who knows how long it would end up being because let’s face it I can get pretty wordy.  I would want my last days documented.  I would want to watch this documentation on the last day.  I would want to pile all of my friends and family in a big room and watch it together.  I would leave a message for everyone.  I would tell them everything that I love about them.  I would tell them everything I could about me and how all I ever do truly want is for those around me to experience the most happiness and bliss they possibly can throughout their lives.  I would even make amends where I felt they were necessary.  A lot of people would tell me to focus only on the positive but I do think it is important to take ownership and in my life I have made several mistakes.  I have hurt people that did not deserve it and I would at least want to say I am sorry.  I would not want to die at this age for real but if it were to happen I do believe I have had a good life.  I haven’t experienced everything I have wanted to but I have experienced love and happiness in so many forms and I think that is the most important.  I have amazing people in my life that have taught me so much and I have grown into this person that I could not be more proud of.  If this was my last week I would want to thank everyone for making me who I am and teaching me all about life.

I do realize that there would be a lot of sadness and tears in the last week knowing these would be the last moments spent with those I love but I would also want to make sure that week was filled with laughter.  I would want to go to the comedy club since I have never done that and zip-line at Broadway at the Beach or go in those bubbles on the water that you try to walk around in.  I would want to do things I haven’t done but I wouldn’t care about novelty so much as who I am with.  A lot of people would want to jump on a plane and go somewhere exotic or go on insane shopping sprees but stuff like that has never really mattered to me.  What would be most important during those days would be letting people know how much I love them and how important they have been in my life.

In writing this I started to wonder how other people would respond.  I have never been married and I do not have children.  My life circumstances are very different from many people my age.  I would really love to hear how other people would respond that do have very different lives than mine.  Where would you go?  What would you do?  Who would you spend your last days with?  With this entry I would really like to hear a lot of other people’s choices?  Tell me, what would you do?  Where would you go?  Who would you spend the time with?