Live Like You Mean It

Here’s the quote that greeted me in my planner today:

“Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.”     ~Albert Einstein

Good old Albert. He was so smart about life.

Yesterday a good friend of mine told me of a good friend of hers who just dropped dead that morning. Literally. This man was my age. I’m pretty sure the night before that,  he was pretty sure he had a few more tomorrows left.

I was struck by this on a deep level. In fact, though not consciously, I think this kept me up part of last night. So I’m not writing with a full deck this morning. But I wanted to come out and play anyway.

I’ve been thinking about something that has come up a few times in conversations in my mentoring group.

“Be a 10.”

How am I showing up in my life? Full out as a 10?  Or do I hang out at a 5… a place of mediocrity. Nothing wrong with mediocre. But there’s not a lot of spice or juice in mediocre. Mediocre gets boring and almost too comfortable. It’s a life on auto pilot.  The difference between that good night kiss,  that peck out of habit, that blah “I love you”  and the passionate embrace that says you mean it.  The one that comes from the awareness that one of us might not be here the next day.

Do I live as if there’s plenty of time to be a 10? Plenty of time to turn up the passion dial in all the slices of my day called my life?

What if there’s not?

What does it look like to play full out? To show up as a 10 just a little more often? To toss rules aside and be a little edgy? To step into places I might want to run from? Like discomfort? To live with a bit more passion?

What if I turned up the dial on my expression and sat back to notice what happens? No pressure, no judgment. No holding back in order to please or not offend. Do I even know how to do this?   I can’t write a plan or prescription but I do know it all starts with a moment. And one moment leads to another.

I almost didn’t write this post today. I had a rule that I needed to be clear headed before showing up to write. And, that maybe I needed to lighten up (see previous post). And that maybe some people wouldn’t want to go here (too uncomfortable, too deep). And I’m getting ready to hit the publish button without much editing. My punctuation might suck. But,  I’m not showing up as a 5 today.  Dancing around a 7 or 8 here in this minimally edited post.

I’m hoping my friend’s friend had a really great good night kiss the night before his last day.

I have a t-shirt that says “Live Like You Mean It”. In other words, be a 10. At least a bit more often.

What do you think?