Where's your desperation?

“In my life right now, I’m eighty. There is so much left to do. So I would like to go back and give myself a bit longer, but as it is, I don’t know how long I have to live, but certainly it is that every year takes me closer to the end, whenever that end is. And so there is this feeling of desperation - there’s so many places I want to go, so many people I want to talk to, and so many hearts I want to reach.”
— Jane Goodall, Human documentary

Where is your desperation to live? You wake up each morning and go about your business and right as rain a few hours later the sun sets…and what have you done? Have you lived? Have you loved?

That sunset is one more day of your life gone. It's terrifying. It’s one thing you can count on, but it’s completely out of your control. One day that sun will set and you will have gone into the ether. Will you be proud of how you lived before that moment came? When you think about that moment now, do you feel an overwhelming sense of missing out? Of regret? 

Good. I want you to sit with that…uneasiness, or even overwhelming despair. Sit with it. What does it have to tell you? Listen. Feel it. If you need to, picture yourself in your final moments, thinking over the life you’ve led. Close your eyes.

As you think about your life, of what are you proud? And maybe more importantly, what do you regret? Specifically. Is there someone that needs to hear something from you? Is there one thing you feel grief, regret about not doing? Zero in. Find that thing, and feel that regret. Feel how awful it feels.

Now write that thing down. You’ve done it! The hardest part is over.