A few weeks ago I rented a movie entitled "One Week" which tells the story of a man in his mid-twenties who is diagnosed with cancer and given the news that he may have as little as one week to live. Being presented with this news, the man buys a motorcycle, sheds the safety and security of his established life and embarks upon a trip west in search of something bigger. The closing minutes of the film ask aloud the question upon which the movie is based; what would you do if you knew you only had one day, one week, one month to live?
Even while I am not faced with any life threatening diseases, as the credits scrolled down the tv I could not help but try to answer that question. What things in life would take on greater importance? Which things would matter less? Watching one week unearthed questions that I have asked myself for sometime, questions to which, to the best of my knowledge, there exists no one right answer. Playing in the backyard as a kid after supper during a long summer evening, I looked up from the game we were playing at that time to catch a glimpse of the last moments of the sunset. The sun, following its westward path, dipped below the horizon leaving me staring at the red sky it had left behind. I can remember thinking as I sat staring at the western horizon where the sun had just been, that you can never go back. The sunset that I had just witnessed was now gone, a moment in time that could not be returned to, swept away by the incessant forward march of time. While to most adults this is an accepted fact of life, to the younger me this simple realization would forever change how I viewed the world around me. Walking away from that sunset left me with a sense of urgency, I had to make the most of every given moment before it was gone. Even simple things like driving to the local convenience store for candy took on a new importance. I feared that if I failed to make the most of each trip to the store, each afternoon at the beach, each day in general, they would quietly slip into the past, never being experiencing to their full potential, like the sunsets that I had taken for granted prior to that point.
As the years past, and more time was stacked between me and that sunset, the urgency that I felt then was largely forgotten, pushed to the back of my mind by the routine of daily life. Shutting off the tv after having finished watching one week, I again felt that familiar urgency I first experienced as a kid. This time though, the feeling of urgency was accompanied by a feeling of not knowing what to do with it. I had direction, but not destination. For a few days after returning one week to the video store, I analysed each day as it came and went; had I made the best of today? Some days I was unsure, worried that perhaps I hadn't. The thing about worrying however is that while it does focus our attention on the traps in life that we can all fall victim to, it does little to help us avoid them. I have a clipping from a magazine that I keep on top of my dresser that reads- "Your position in relation to other objects in the universe directly affects your perception of the universe. If things haven't been going your way recently, maybe you should try a different view" It would seem that while I was in search of my elusive "days lived to the fullest" the problem lay not so much in how I lived the days themselves, but rather, in how I viewed them.
"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." - Grace Hansen
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