Live with passion

I promised this blog would never devolve into a touchy-feely self help thing, and I intend to break that only very, very rarely. This is one of those times, so you've been warned.

Sunday was my birthday, which capped four fabulous days at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Walking back to my hotel Sunday evening, I collapsed in the street and began having seizures. The ambulance came, and I spent the night in the ER. As I slipped in and out of consciousness, I thought I was going to die.

I probably wasn't in any serious danger once I was in the care of the paramedics, but that's not what it felt like. The point is that I truly believed that I might not come out of it.

The next morning, when it was clear I was going to be fine, everything looked a little more beautiful. Trees were greener. The sky was bluer. People were nicer and better-looking. And all I could think about was how damn lucky I was.

The ER doctor thought it was probably just a weird combination of high altitude and lack of sleep that triggered my usually very controlled epilepsy.

So here I am, appreciating everything in that way that you do whenever you've had a close call (or at least thought it was a close call). We've all had them... a car accident that happened only moments after you safely made it through the intersection. A bad bit of rope in your climbing gear that you discovered only after you made it down the side of the rock. Those times in college you drove home way too drunk.

And we know that if we can hang on to this feeling, our lives will be richer. Or as Tyler Durden says in the movie Fight Club after threatening to kill the shop clerk unless the clerk pursues his original dream of becoming a vet, "tomorrow his breakfast will taste better than it ever has..."

But somehow, it's so easy to forget. So easy to slip into that daily world of things that seem important, but that if faced with the last day of our life would seem ridiculously trivial.

You probably saw this already, but the Standford commencement address given by Steve Jobs last week expresses this much better than I can. You really need to read the whole thing if you haven't, but here's a small piece:

"...for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

I hadn't realized that he was originally given 3-6 months to live when first diagnosed with cancer a year ago.

If each day we could all remember a close call, or imagine what could happen, it would certainly change our perspective. My mother died of breast cancer at the very young age of 40, when I was a teenager, and I remember wondering if she would have lived her life differently if she'd known it would end so early.

I will always remember this last Telluride for the fabulous music and scenery and weather and new friends. And I also hope that I never forget to live each day the way I vowed I would as I was lying in the street thinking, "If I make it out of this..."

Here's to living each day with passion : )

OK, back to our regularly scheduled content.