Live Your Best Life

“And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves. It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.” –Donald Miller

If you knew your number of days, would you live differently? We abundantly hear the topic of establishing goals, but most of us never bring our ideas to fruition. It is easy to fall into the chasm of life where we are caught in the web of complacency and daily routine. We become immersed in an abysmal sea of distraction that washes us away from the shore of our unfulfilled dreams. The notion of generating and writing goals may appear trivial at first glance, but it can be what sets living apart from existing. You only have one life, and I challenge you to go after it.

Several years ago, I listened to a young man give a discussion at an educational benefit. He is the brother of Rachel Scott, the first victim of the horrendous Columbine High School shooting. The speaker delved into the importance of composing and writing goals and its correlation to achieving success and accomplishing dreams. That night, I went home and I established a list that was comprised of the top 100 things that I want to experience in my life. I gave no regard to how outlandish or unattainable they may have seemed at the time. I wrote from the perspective of envisioning the final moments of life. What would it take for me to feel as though I had fully lived?

In 1961 even John F. Kennedy spoke before Congress of his goals in search of space program funding. He asserted that the United States was in need of committing itself to the goal of having a man land on the moon by the end of the decade. In July of 1969, with less than six months to spare, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins fulfilled the President’s bold aspiration. There is power in the articulation of our words and how they relate to the fulfillment of our ambitions.

It was only four years ago that the sweet, funny kid that graced my classroom had passed away from brain cancer at the age of 13. He left a huge empty space in my heart. What probably hurt the most was to watch the torturous misfortune that his mother would be forced to endure.

Before his passing, the class held a discussion from the book Tuck Everlasting. The characters inadvertently drink from a mystical fountain of youth and are forced into immortality. The conversation with this boy is forever imprinted into my mind after I posed the question to the class – would you choose immortality over death? He shrugged without hesitation to suggest that it was really no contest at all. He asserted that he would unequivocally choose death. It was a valiant statement from a terminally ill child to offer mortality as the better alternative. His justification was that we need to make do with the time we are given. There is an excerpt from the book that says “Do not be afraid of death, but the unlived life.” I have feared death, but more importantly, I have been far too content with the complacency of my own existence. The great tragedy rests in the latter, as it is the avoidable path.

It was shortly thereafter that I faced my own catastrophic hardships of life. A failed marriage left me feeling devastated and afraid as I stood at the doorstep of homelessness and financial insecurity. Loneliness festers in the quietness of the night. I have wept into the darkness, only for my cries to be left unanswered. I have lost much but have gained more through the process of grief. It brought me an opportunity to rebuild myself better than I was before. I thought back to the list of my 100 things. I retrieved it from my drawer and I began my journey - not of life, but of living.

I started with guitar lessons and a marathon. The guitar lessons made my fingers hurt, but I learned a few things along the way. I mostly discovered that I am horrible at playing the guitar. The marathon was probably one of the most physically grueling but rewarding achievements of my life. The hours I spent running on the road offered me time to heal and sort out my business.

On October 6, 2013, I ran my heart out and concluded my 26.2 mile endeavor. I will never forget that moment of crossing the finish line and hearing the crowd cheer. My body was battered, but my soul was completely ignited like a phoenix reborn and rising up from the ashes.

“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth. Then, I ask myself the same question.” - Harun Yahya

More recently, travel has moved to the forefront of my agenda. I grew up in the awe-inspiring wilderness of Montana; however, the seclusion has fueled my need to see and experience the world. I began with taking a trip through the desert so that I could meander my way to Texas. I don’t know that I would recommend this for everyone, but I slept in my car at truck stops just for the sake of making the trip all the more interesting. I drove each day into the wee hours to watch the sun fade like a masterpiece into the distance of where the sky kisses the face of a brazen mountain. I experienced (not saw) the wonderment of what the author Donald Miller describes as a painted desert. My eyes were open and my heart was full as I awoke each morning to unveil Emily Dickinson words: “I’ll tell you how the sun rose, -- a ribbon at a time”. I was witness to nature’s portraits that were so beautiful that it was an impossibility to hold back the raw emotion of the moment. Tears streamed down my face as I stood at the threshold between night and day.

When I wrote my list, I made sure to include items that were just at the cusp of outlandish but remained plausible. I stumbled many years ago upon a brochure for swimming with dolphins. I thought “why not?” and placed this adventure on my list, but it remained in the “highly unlikely” category in the back of my mind. I hung that brochure on my refrigerator where it served as a reminder for seven years. I had decided that there would be no harm for the addition of outlandish dreams, only from missed opportunity.

Missions work in Mexico left me eager to return so that I could experience its leisurely splendor. There is something so fundamentally delightful about sipping coffee while enveloped in the morning sun on a Mexican rooftop. World travelers proclaim that Mexico has some of the most beautiful beaches in the entirety of the world. The experience draws you in like a strong embrace that offers reprieve to a weary soul.

It was in Puerto Vallarta where I captured some of the most delightful moments of my life story. Time stood still as my “highly unlikely” items took shape like a comprehensive inception of hopeful dreams. I experienced the warmth and inexplicable beauty of the Pacific Ocean, received my unlikely opportunity to swim with dolphins, dined on succulent cuisine, and unexplainably found love. Like a lucid dream, never could I fully envision swimming with dolphins and under no circumstance did I think I would ever find love. There I was, caught in the elegant rapture of the beauty of life.

My father used to tell me to do my best with what I’ve got. I know that I haven’t fully hit the mark on all of my goals. At 6 feet tall, I didn’t make a very good wakeboarder, but I kept trying until I was able to make it out of the water. When you catch the toe-side edge of a wakeboard, the lake’s surface at 20 mph feels less like water and more like concrete. The experience was sufficient enough for me to cross it off of my list. I have accepted that the idea is not that of mastery but of effort.

I’ve had to make peace with the past. I have struggled with forgiveness and letting things go, but I continue to be a work in progress. The most valuable component to my happiness has been learning to surrender and knowing when to let go. I deplore the process of grieving, but there is no path to circumvent the condition and true healing does not allow for us to skip steps. There is no guarantee of happiness in life, only sorrow as we move through the lines of our own Shakespearean tragedy. Suffering is the thread that intertwines the fibers of all humanity.

I am in bewilderment of how my life has unfolded before my eyes. I have felt the searing pain of loss like wind removed from a sail, but there is opportunity for growth and beauty in every moment. We have this vision and anticipation of how we think our life will go and then we experience the callous reality. I’m learning the importance of being present and rejoicing in the moment. All we have is today; the here and now.

It is important to accept that tomorrow is out of our control while maintaining a sense of hope. It’s exciting to think about the potential that arises from the breath of dawn on a new day. I think about what is yet to come. I want to finish my novel, eat weird food, dance, skydive, and hold the hand of my love under the brilliance of an aurora borealis as it pirouettes across the night sky. If I finish all of my items, then I will write one hundred more.

Do whatever it takes to know that you lived – write the novel, jump into the lake wearing the fancy dress, learn to dance, experience the exotic places of the world, and don’t be afraid to love deeply. My plea to you is that when it is your unavoidable time, your heart will be full because it turned every stone. You can rest knowing that you lived and not existed. Make your list and brace yourself for how your life is about to change.

• A recent study by Dr. Gail Matthews suggests that the act of writing your goals makes you 42 percent more likely to achieve them.

• The top 3 most popular items on a bucket list include: 1) Offer support to a humanitarian cause 2) Write a book 3) Pursue a passion.

• According to a recent report, only four out of 10 have a goal list for their retirement years.

#adventure