I was reading a very interesting book by Lissa Rankin the other day in which she asks a question that made me stop and think: “If someone handed you a microphone and put you in front of an audience on the last day of your life, what would you say to the world?”
And I’m returning you the question: what would you say? What have you learnt so far in this life that really matters? If it was your last day on earth, what would be your regrets, what would you be proud of having accomplished? What advices would be your legacy?
Here is what I would answer:
- I would say “trust”. Everything happens for a reason and everything is exactly as it should be. I’ve been through very dark times in my life, and I can tell you one thing for sure: I’ve learnt a lot from them and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for those difficult experiences. Now if you’re more an existentialist, you could still look at things in a similar way, instead of saying “everything happens for a reason” you could simply say “there’s a lesson to learn in every situation“. Bottom line, if you choose to look at it this way, things always turn out to be for the best.
- The second thing I’d want to say is “love”. Love as much as you can, as many people as you can, because what matters in the end, on the last day of your life, is not how much money you’ve made (what will you do with that money in your grave anyway), nor how successful you were, or how much power and respect you earned in your life. What will matter is who is going to hold your hand on your last breath. So never hold back on love, love your friends, your family, people you work with, of course your partner and your children, but love and share that love as much as you can, also because there’s no feeling beating the one of offering genuine love and receiving smiles, love and happiness in return.
- Of course my next one will be “jump” and seize all opportunities. Don’t wait for the perfect moment, the perfect person, the perfect conditions, they’ll never come. What do you have to lose anyway, it’s not as if you’ll be here in 100 years. When you go on holidays for a week, you do take the opportunity to do as many things as you can, because you know your time is limited. And it doesn’t matter if it rains or snows, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the right shoes, you’ll still go and do as much as you can, because you might never get another chance…Life is the same. Who knows how long you’ve got left to live, so seize the moment and the chances that are offered to you, as it may be your last ones.
- Ditch away the fears, they aren’t good for you. Fear is only a horror movie, in the sense that fear is most of the time just the worst case scenario of a given situation. Have you noticed how often what we fear never happens? And how often things turn out better than we were scared of? Which means life is full of good surprises, so when you’re scared remember it’s likely to be better than you think anyway, so ditch the fears and start living.
- As for work, do what you love. We spend most of our days, therefore most of our lives in our job, so we’d rather do something that make us happy. Find your passion, and find a way to do it for a living. If not now, when?!
- And finally, enjoy life. Have you seen the movie “the bucket list”, where two terminally ill patients write their dearest wishes and start to do them before dying? So write your bucket list, what are the things you would love to do before you die? And make a goal in ticking off that list. That’s what life is about at the end.
What about you? what would you tell the world on the last day of your life?