I was just in Borders browsing the retirement/aging section when I ran across a book called “The Myth of Tomorrow” by Gary W. Buffone, PhD. I read it for about 2 hours in the coffee shop. In the book he’s basically trying to get the reader to stop and think about their own death. Reason being, people that have near death experiences (NDE’s), usually change their lives for the better. They stop complaining to their wives about squeezing the toothpaste tube at the top and they start paying more attention to the bigger things. Like their golf swing (just kidding!)
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have an NDE and then to escape it and be healthy again? Then, presumably, we would be living more authentic lives. Here’s a few things I need to work on…
1) When my kids are talking to me, a lot of times I’m only giving them half an ear. Quentin is so enthusiastic about his “Yu Gi Oh” trading cards, and his Medabots, and his Donkey Kong Nintendo game, to name a few. When he’s expounding on one of those, I’m unfortunately only acting interested. Shame on me.
2) Stop procrastinating! This is a bad one for me. Here I am doing a blog entry, and I’ve got a nice long to do list for my work. What’s really strange is that a) When I successfully start working on a task, I usually like doing it, b) some tasks only take a couple of minutes to solve, and c) I’m almost giddy when I complete a task. So why do I procrastinate? It’s the inertia of getting started. It’s much easier to do something else. Like read blogs or play Battlefield 1942.
Procrastination is the antithesis of NDE living, because it presupposes you will be alive tomorrow. My guess would be that NDE people don’t procrastinate, but then again, they probably don’t have very long to do lists either.
I need to go back and take a few notes from the book. It was pretty good.
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