Living as if we had all the time in the world

I just came across the phrase “live each day as if it were your last”. I find that to be one of the most depressing phrases ever!!! Why would I like to live as if I were saying good-bye to everyone I love, as if I were realizing that I no longer had time to do all the things that I like to do, or as if I had to accept that I could no longer begin any projects or plans, given that my time had run out???

I prefer to live as if I had a long life ahead of me. There is nothing I like better than to have several projects going on, and some of them are quite long-term… If I stop and think logically, I would possibly have to accept that I will not necessarily live long enough to see everything finished and completed. But I don’t care!!! I’m happy planning, working with my goals set far into the future, creating medium and long-term ideas, dreaming of a thousand new possibilities for my life, imagining all the people I have yet to meet and how they are going to be part of my life, thinking of all the stories I will tell my grandson’s children, learning so many new and interesting things there are to learn…

Not too long ago, I was witness to a very important life lesson that I deeply appreciate and which has something to do with my way of thinking. A person who was part of one of the classes that I take was ill and she knew that she didn’t have much longer to live. However, she never lost her beautiful smile, she was always taking notes as if she was going to have to refer to them in the future, and she had an insatiable thirst for learning. I was quite saddened when I learned she was no longer with us but I will always remember her attitude in class – which I imagine reflected her attitude to life in general – even though we never exchanged more than a few words.

That is why you might as well not even ask me how old I am… and it is not a matter of vanity, because I will tell you my exact age once I finish figuring it out by the year I was born in, but nothing to me is more irrelevant than age. As long as I have good health, energy and my mind is working properly, I declare myself to be timeless!!!