Expat Community > Ecuador

luckydawg
Joined 2011
Posts: 291

To move or not to move, that is the question

13 years ago

Hola;

I read a lot of posts on this and other expat sites where people are struggling with the decision of whether to go or to stay. I would like to share a short story that changed my life. About 30 years ago, I attended an educational seminar in Dallas TX. There was a keynote speaker; a cardiologist by the name of Robert Eliot. He was about 55 and had just written a book entitled: "Is It Worth Dying For".

It was sort of a biography. He explained that he was a type A driven man who worked 40 hours every day, had very little life outside his job and at the age of 40, had a massive heart attack. Coming face to face with his own mortality was a life changing event. It took one year for him to recover, if he had not been at work when the heart attack happened, he would not have lived, it was that serious. During that year, he began writing what would later become the book. I bought and read the book and it is now available on Amazon as a Kindle edition.

The tombstone test: The one piece of advice from the book I have never forgotten was that you have to imagine that you have just come from your doctor, who informed you that you have six months to a year to live. All of a sudden you begin to think what to do with your remaining time on this earth. What Eliot recommends is that you give yourself The Tombstone Test. Once you get over the shock and the denial, sit down and make three lists.

1. A list of the things you must do before you die.

2. A list of the things you would like to do before you die; (The Bucket List).

3. A list of the things you should do before you die.

If you don't have anything in the 3rd list, you are in trouble.That means that in your life, everything is "must do". Start over. Once you have your three lists. Throw the 3rd list away.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990, at the age of 50. That was my face to face with my own mortality and it changed my life. The cancer is gone which is a story of its own which I will share with anyone interested. I remembered Eliots book, read it again and made my 3 lists, which became two and that is how I have lived my life since that time. In reality I have always sort of lived that way. I am not a driven type A. One of my peers, who was a type A observed that I didn't work with the same intensity he did. I said; "Scott, you live to work and I work to live". My ex wife was one who had only one list; everything was must do, that's why it was a short marriage. I didn't have enough hours in the day to finish her endless "honeydo lists"

I've been told that it is written in the Torah that funeral shrouds don't have pockets.

Hasta Luego

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