Missing Passion

Why is it that everyday we live life like we’ll live forever? We put things off that we know we want to do. We forget to tell the ones we love, “I love you.”
We think we’ll have forever to change our ways, but yet we don’t know what the next five minutes will hold.
I read this past week about a lady who attended the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and collapsed on her way back to her hotel.
She began having seizures and was rushed to the ER, where she spent the night slipping in and out of consciousness.
She said she literally thought she was going to die. She truly believed that she would not make it.
‘”The next morning, when it was clear I was going to be fine, everything looked a little more beautiful,” she wrote. “Trees were greener. The sky was bluer. People were nicer and better-looking. And all I could think about was how damn lucky I was.”
There’s a great Tim McGraw song on the radio now called, “Live Like You Were Dying.”
The song tells the story of a man who faced death and started living like he really had nothing left to lose.
The chorus is simple but strong, “I went skydiving. I went rocky mountain climbing. I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu. And I loved deeper. And I spoke sweeter. And I gave forgiveness I’d been denyin’. And he said some day I hope you get the chance to live like you were dyin’.”
We’ve all had our close calls -- some closer than others.
Maybe it was a car accident that happened only moments before you arrived or seconds after you left a scene, a fall that could have been much worse than it was, a fire that you barely escaped, a cancer diagnosis that you overcame.
We all discover how precious life is in those moments.
If we can hang on to that feeling, think about how richer our lives will be.
But yet we forget about how wonderful and exciting life can be. I do it daily. I get bummed and discontent with things and forget to look at how much there really is to enjoy.
It’s so easy for me to lose my passion in the things I do each and every day.
We all know that if we can hang on to that feeling, our lives will be richer.
If we did those things we kept putting off, we’d enjoy life so much more.
Or as Tyler Durden says in the movie Fight Club, after threatening to kill the shop clerk unless the clerk pursues his original dream of becoming a vet, “tomorrow his breakfast will taste better than it ever has...”
My favorite movie line in history is from the Million Dollar Hotel.
As the movie opens we see a young man running and jumping off the roof of a Los Angeles Hotel and he thinks as he’s falling, “It occurred to me after I jumped… Life is perfect, life is beautiful.”
Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford several weeks ago and wrote about his passion for life.
“...for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
Jobs was given only three to six months to live last year when he was diagnosed with cancer. Now he lives each day like it was his last.
If we could wake up each day and remember those close calls or think about what could happen today and live like there was no tomorrow, how different would we be?

Thanks to Creating Passionate Users for the inspiration for this entry.