Live Every Day Like It Could Be Your Last

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

The late Steve Jobs was well known for reminding us to live every day like it could be our last – because someday it will be. If the answer was “no” for too many days in a row, he claimed, he knew he needed to make a change. “Remembering I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. His point was this – if you knew today was your last day, would you be happy with how you are spending it. Two millennia earlier, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius also pronounced that “perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.”

These thoughts came to me yesterday as I attended the funeral of a young man whose mother is a professional colleague and friend of mine. The story surrounding his death hit everyone in our community extremely hard. He was a hospice social worker who was murdered while on an emergency hospice visit over the New Year’s weekend. A gentle, kind soul, he was dedicated to his work but senselessly killed. There was not a dry eye in the room. What was true about his life is that he did live every day as if it could be his last – maybe at some level, he knew this as some people do. His parents took solace in knowing that his final act on earth was in the service of others.

Too many of us spend all of our time planning for the future while ignoring what is happening right in front of us. At times, it’s seemed as though life contains an endless supply of days to recover from our mistakes and misdeeds. It isn’t until you attend a funeral or receive a diagnosis that you realize that all life fades. While you considered time to be a commodity, it may be a scarce one at that.

As long as we don’t take it too literally, living each day as if it were our last is an attractive ideal, particularly for people searching for the confidence to overcome fears, to challenge conventions, and to live a life of their own making. It is worth asking yourself what you would like to be remembered for and then reflecting on how much of that behavior you are actually engaged in. It is also worth asking whether you are worrying too much. The late Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.” So for 2019, strive to live as you want to be remembered – every day.