5 Things I'd Change in My Fishbowl

I've been challenged, to examine my life as if I had only 30 days left to live. What would I change? Tricky question because I consider this as a person in full health who is looking at this rhetorically. It might be a whole different story if I were to consider it while holding, in my hand, a crinkly piece of pink paper with carbon imprints holding the words 30 days to live on it. Nonetheless, when I consider the idea of what would I do if I was given that diagnosis, I inevitably have to consider how would I change the way I would live my last days. These are the 5 things I would change with brutal honesty and cutting self-reflection.

I'd be kinder to the people who are closest to me. Sometimes I feel sorry for the people who I love the most. I'm not explosively angry--at least not often, but I can respond with a too harsh and sarcastic tone. Living with me can be like walking on a fluffy shag carpet that has shards of broken glass buried beneath the cushy top. I can be sharp and too harsh with the ones I love. I also have a tendancy to close myself up like a Morning Glory in the afternoon sun. I can smile and seem open and friendly when I first meet people. But beyond that I can be difficult to know. Old wounds are so easily activated--the slightest prod and my heart can quickly be shut down. I'm a professional at this. When something my husband does wounds me, and it could be the slightest thing, I deliberately withdraw myself. I hold in my smiles and my touch. I withhold any praise and see everything he does as evidence for a case I am at trial with in my mind. Before the jury reconvenes, the gavel has resounded on the hollow mahogany--he's already been tried and convicted in my mind. I hold grudges over silly and foolish things--sometimes going days holding in my heart.

I would focus on squeezing every drop of joy out of each present moment. Since I gave up doing drugs and relationships as modes of self-medication, planning is the sweet anesthetic of choice in my life. If there are no minutes in my life to spare, I can't waste time wallowing in regret. I spend hours of every day booking my time full to the max and dreaming about where we will go and what we will do etc etc. So much so in fact, that the dull ache in my heart for missed and lost friendships and loves is dwindled down to nothing.

I'd write. Born a writer I believe. Gifted with the ability to look at the simplest thing, like a hazard sign on the side of a guardrail and suddenly a person is born in my mind. Trouble with me, I lack the self-discipline and conviction to use my craft. My dad was a writer at heart, though a fisherman by trade. One of my daughters is also blessed with the gift. Or cursed with it depending on your perspective. I have several journals with tattered, yellowing pages. They hold hundreds of manuscripts--poetry, short stories, children's books, starts of fictional novels. There is a writer buried deep inside of this skin--unfortunately fear keeps me from shedding my exoskeleton and letting her emerge.

I'd quit being afraid about what people might think of me if they knew my past. This goes hand and hand with the above. In order to write authentically, one must be willing to share the dark spaces in their mind. And to some degree, must be willing to allow others to peek into their souls. That's the wonderful comfort of fiction--anything you write can be cast off as unreal--but the writer still bears their inmost thoughts, what their minds are capable of thinking of, when they write of even the most horrifying things. I would stop regretting the money I wasted on pot and pills. I would forget about the wild partying with far too many shots of tequila or too many men in one weekend. Shards of memories of sleeping with men while nearly overdosing on drugs or alcohol would finally lose there hold and slip all the way down into the deep abyss of oblivion. Better yet, or even worse, I'd completely forget the equally terrible choices that I made while completely sober. I would just use those events and times as evidence of Jesus' remarkable work and transformation in my life and I would quit being ashamed of them.

Last but not least, I'd use the time I had more wisely. Death charges the simplest moments with remarkable clarity. A friend of mine died while we were in high school. I still see him vividly walking away from me under the flourescent lights and the subtle green glow of our high school hallway. Amid the buzz of passing time at the very end of the school day, it was the last time I saw him alive. Whirling away with his arms outstretched--quickly lost in the crowd. That moment is crisp in my mind. Fueled by the frantic and intense grief of the days that followed his death. I'd make as many memories as possible like that. I'd spend aboslutely only 8 hours of my life working and would only do it on work days. I'd spend more time with Jesus and I'd spend more time with my family. I'd absorb every moment of intimacy with them. Every smile, every hug, every meal shared, every hug, every kiss, every phone call would carry the buzzing elecrtical charge of mortality in it. I'd even let people take pictures of me.

So that's pretty much it... the five things I would change in my fishbowl if I knew I was going home in 30 days.