I just got done watching the movie ’50 First Dates’ with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, and I saw a great opportunity to share a lesson with my readers!
The premise of the movie is that Drew Barrymore’s character gets a head injury that causes her to only be able to remember one day of her life at a time. Each morning when she wakes up, she thinks that her life is exactly as it was before her head injury – same date, same job, same things to do that day, etc.
Adam Sandler meets her at a cafe in Hawaii and is immediately smitten with her. They agree to have breakfast at the same cafe the next day, but unfortunately for Sandler’s character, Drew doesn’t remember who he is!
So, the movie goes on with all of these hilarious and heart-warming examples of how he tries to get her to fall in love with him every day. Eventually it gets to the point where they find ways to remind her every morning about her situation, and she realizes that she only has until she falls asleep that night in order to live her life to the fullest. By the next morning she will not remember anything that happened the day before.
A very cute and pretty funny movie, but it is the message that really struck me, and I immediately saw how others could benefit from that message.
Imagine what it would be like to wake up every day, and realize that you only had that one day to enjoy your life. To realize that when you went to bed that night, anything that you wanted to enjoy in the world had to have been enjoyed that very day, because you wouldn’t remember anything the next morning, and you would have to start all over again.
Do you think that you might work harder than you presently do to enjoy each moment of your life?
Do you think that you might spend more time with your family, or your loved ones?
Do you think that you might put forth more effort at having fun, and less effort at working?
Do you think you that you might enjoy that day simply for the sake of enjoying it, rather than because you might be worried about what tomorrow is going to bring?
As human beings doing our time here on planet Earth, we tend to define ourselves in two ways:
1) What we did in the past
2) What we plan to do in the future
When you think about it, that is pretty sad, considering that the only moment that we can totally control is this moment – the moment that we are living in right now.
The past is completely chiseled in stone and can never be changed. Whether you are talking about what happened 60 seconds ago or 60 years ago – it’s done, and there is nothing that you can do about it.
The future, although more in our control than the past, is still in the future, and given the fragility of the human condition, the future may never come at all.
The only period of our lives that is completely, 100% in our control is the NOW.
Do yourself a favor, and consider this:
If you lost the ability to judge yourself on the mistakes that you made in the past, and you knew for a fact that you weren’t going to remember any mistakes that you make today, what would you do today?
I sincerely hope that you answered with nothing less than “I would live my life to the fullest, for these moments will never come again!”
Start living your life with that attitude right now, and you will be amazed at how quickly life starts giving you everything that you need to keep right on doing exactly that.
Missed the point.
Imagine that you did nothing to move forward in your life or toward your goals today. You just enjoyed life, lazed about and enjoyed being. And then You woke up the next morning and “Oh my God” you are right back where you were yesterday morning.
I think that it is more important to live each day as if I only have x to make it to the finish line, to attain my goal, etc.
If I were to live today as if it were to be my last, I would not do anything productive, other than to tell my family that I love them. I’d probably fly the Grand Canyon.
If I were to live each day that way, I’d wind up sleeping on a Steam Vent or living in a cardboard box.
As important as it is to have self fulfilling Hallmark moments in our lives, it is much more important to not waste a precious day, we don’t actuallu know how many we have to achieve our dreams!
Steve,
Thanks for your input, and I totally agree that if we all thought that we weren’t going to have another day in our lives, that we probably wouldn’t do anything productive! We’d spend our last dime, eat nothing but junk food, and try to cram as much fun as possible into that 24-period.
However, the point that I want to make is that most people don’t spend enough time doing the things that are going to take their lives where they want them to be because they are too busy worrying about what happened in the past and about what might happen in the future.
By all means, we should not live our lives with zero responsibility. However, we should also remember that by thinking about past events and also worrying about the future, that we forget to live with the very enjoyment that will create the future that we want. 🙂