WEEK 20 : MAKING IT (TO) MY LAST DAY, OG

I go dizzy sometimes as I carry my sorted boxes. The cleared area looks much bigger but it’s becoming a blur like the memory of the number of trips I’ve made to the recycle bin.

“And what shall I do with this last day that remains in my keeping?”

The author doesn’t know it, but he actually means ”the day I don’t know is going to be my last, but just in case it turns out to have been, I’m going to slog harder than ever before.”

Because there’s so much I haven’t done yet.

But Og, won’t there always be?

If I throw myself into getting more of it done than ever before, isn’t that like running up Mount Everest intending to make it in a day? Now that would help to make this day so much more likely to be my last that you must mean something else.

Doctors are known for saying this to cancer patients :

” The rubbish in your attic isn’t just sitting there passively as rubbish is meant to do. It’s gone rogue and it’s coming for you. For one of these days to be your last all you have to do is nothing different.

‘You see, you’re like Horatius, keeping the bridge with a few loyal followers who will never leave you. But there’s an army coming, in fact it’s already here, and the point is they don’t just want to kill and win, but it’s you they’re after, just you. There are millions of them, they’ve got into your city already and they’re taking you down from the inside. Your last day will be sooner rather than later.”

The magnificent gladiator gave his life for his country/his country’s democracy in the firm belief that he had an afterlife to go to. His fight was in existence and made no difference to his life – he just moved into another room.

So you want to disbelieve this? Be my guest, go right ahead. You and a few cynics up against all the cultural myth and legend ever. Are you really so sure they all got it so wrong? I’d say it isn’t that they all couldn’t face total annihilation – it’s that you couldn’t face the thought that when you come back from holiday your work will still be there to get on with.

So I’ve got cancer (not really, as far as I know:) ). And I start assuming that now is all I have and all that matters, because I’m going to meet my future self quite soon. IT knew more about my life plan than I did.

But nor do I believe ‘Life’s a bitch and then you’re dead.”

So let’s do something every day. Not nothing, and not more and more and more and more (sorry, Og – when I started this I just followed it and didn’t know I’d end up disagreeing 🙂 ).

Being the best I can be is by definition a task that never ends. Be your best anytime you like, but not on condition that one day will be your last, as there is no last.

This day can never be my last. Irrespective of days and sunrises, life just is and there’s no escape. Changing the conditions doesn’t change the state.