“Two questions to consider: 1. If you had only a day to live, who would you be with and what would you tell them? 2. What are you waiting for?”

-Anonymous

I was just headed to dinner at a retreat I was leading when I checked my personal voice messages. The first was from a woman I knew, telling me in tears that a mutual friend we both worked closely with, Ron, had been murdered. In shock, I called my office voice mail immediately, expecting other colleagues to be calling me upon hearing the news.

The first voice mail on that phone was from Ron. He had called me just a couple of hours before being shot to death. His voice was light and breezy, he made a few remarks about a project we were working on together, and then said 3 words I’ve never forgotten: “Call me tomorrow.”

There I was, just minutes after learning of his death, hearing his voice confidently plan a tomorrow that would never come for him. I’ve never taken tomorrow for granted since that day.

We talk about and plan for tomorrow as if it were in our shirt pocket. But one day the shirt will be ripped off, the pocket torn open, and there will be no more tomorrows. It’s not morbid, just data. Not knowing when that day will come means we may want to have our affairs in order, at least on the emotional and spiritual level, today.

The two questions above really help to focus what and who is important to us. Once we know who we want to spend our time with and what we want to tell them, why wait? For the last day? No telling when that day might come, and it may be sooner than we think.

Who do you want to be with today, and what do you want to tell them?

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Joe Laur is a father, husband, naturalist, executive, consultant, and a lowly rabbinic student. He can be reached at joe.laur@godsdog.net.