How Are You Going to Live?

"You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live now."

-- Joan Baez

No matter how much time and energy we spend thinking about, preparing for, discussing and avoiding death, it is inevitable. One day you're here, next day you're not. Or in Bumper Sticker Wisdom parlance -- nobody gets out of here alive! You may get hit by a bus, eaten up by the BIG C, suffer a heart attack on the tennis court, or die in bed with a smile on your face. Unless you're planning to commit suicide you don't get to determine the moment or cause of your death. And, hell, even then, you may botch the suicide attempt!

Enough cheery talk for one post! Let's say we focus on the now, on what is generically referred to as your life. Now there's an arena where you have the power to make some decisions. In fact, you can do whatever the hell you want. Of course, there's that pesky little Law of Karma to consider -- whatever you do will create reactions and reverberations that you're going to have to deal with in one form or another -- but the freedom to design and create your own life still exists.

Way too much of the time we just sort of live on automatic pilot. We let our lives create us, rather than visa versa. We glide along in familiar grooves until the grooves becomes ruts and unconscious behavior patterns run amuck, and we're merely along for the ride.

And then one day we wake up, and we're 50 or 60 0r 70 (if we're lucky enough to both live that long and wake up), and we say "What the hell happened to my life?"

So, here I go again. I'm a one trick pony, a one note song, a one man band, and it seems all I ever sing is "Now." Now is the only time we have. Now is our only point of power. Now is the one and only reality. Now. What do I want to do with my life right now? That's both the mantra and koan of living a good life. Ask it of yourself constantly. Answer it the best that you can. And then do it, live it, be it. Now and now and now, on and on, each day, each hour, each moment, creating the life you truly want to live.