Throughout the month of December, I’ll be participating in #reverb12: celebrating the successes of 2012, honoring the challenges of 2012, and planting the seeds for a rich and rewarding 2013. December is the perfect time to reflect on the year that has passed and start to manifest dreams for the new year.
Day 3 – What Do You Really Wish For?
Today’s #reverb12 prompt and image come from Cam aka Curlypops.
Living life on a transplant waiting list gives you lots of reasons to reflect on what you’ve achieved in your life, and what you wish for the future. Imagine a scenario where you only had one year left to live. What is one thing that you really wish to do that you just haven’t had the chance to accomplish yet? What steps could you take (however small) to ensure that you accomplish this thing in 2013?
Gosh, this is such a difficult prompt for me to answer because the thing that I want most (achieving my weight loss goal) would become unimportant to me if I only had one year to live. I know that may shock my longtime readers, but here’s why.
My weight loss journey has been a main focus of my life throughout my adulthood, and definitely for the past 15 years. Achieving it would mean the world to me, but it’s going to take more than a year to achieve AND will involve surgery, so if I was given only 1 more year to live, I wouldn’t want to spend any of that time recovering, dieting, etc. I’d want to make the most of whatever time I had left and not worry about my weight, my health, or counting calories.
The biggest thing I’d like to accomplish if given only a year to live would be to travel. I love traveling and learning about new places, but I haven’t in YEARS because I can’t afford it financially. Or better put, I haven’t made it a priority financially. I’d definitely shift my focus and my spending and do whatever it took so that I could see all the places on my Bucket List.
I’ve achieved everything professionally that I want to, so I’d be very happy to leave teaching, pull all of my teacher’s retirement out, and use that money on a whirlwind trip: Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and England. Australia and New Zealand. Cuba, The Dominican Republic, and Hawaii. The east coast of the U.S., including New England, NYC, and Washington DC. Chicago, New Orleans, Savannah and Austin. Seattle, Portland, and then all through my beautiful home state of California from Lake Tahoe to San Diego. I’d make sure to see as many friends and as much family as possible along the way.
Traveling offers a chance to see the world through other peoples’ eyes. To find out about myself by seeing the way that someone else lives. It sharpens my own ideals and values because it allows me to see an entirely different perspective. Religion, food, music, art, architecture – all of these things define culture, and by learning about other cultures, I can get a better understanding of my own.
What better way to spend the last year of life than by truly living?
It’s interesting how huge a shift my life would take if I was given just one more year to live.
Luckily, I haven’t been told that startling news, so I can go forward with my weight loss plans. Because when it comes right down to it, remaining obese makes my days a lot more limited than they need to be. Which is why it’s been a priority. Plus, I’m so close, and it would be a shame to get this far and not achieve that one, elusive goal.
(Keep scrolling down to read this beautiful image, which I found on Pinterest, courtesy of Words to Live By)
Oh, I love this post. Both the realization of how the “one year to live” is different for you than the reality. I am focusing more on my health now, too. My weight loss struggle has been almost life long except I usually forget it exists.
I’m grateful to read your post today – Here is my post from the same prompt.
Julie, thank you so much for your comment. It’s always nice to know someone can empathize with a lifelong weight struggle.
I was working on catching up on drafting my 3 days of reverb at lunch today and I said almost the exact same thing. When I think about my main goal for 2013 or the foreseeable future, it relates to fitness. But if there was only a year left, forget that — I’d also be all about traveling. I tried very hard to find a way to indicate that something I had planned for 2013 is taking me closer to seeing more of the world, but it was a stretch… I’m hoping to post it tomorrow or Wed (I have to do the one about spending first since I want to post in order).
I need to catch up on reading the #reverb12 posts my friends are writing, including yours.