My friend Claudia left a brilliant comment on my Facebook page this morning. She brought up the last moments of the Germanwings flight. You know, the one where the plane went into an eight-minute decent before crashing into a French mountainside. She wondered what the people on the plane were thinking. Did they know? Were they calm? Did they call loved ones? I don’t know about you, but I always have a bad habit of putting myself on plane crashes. How do you prepare for a moment like that? How would you get ready for your final eight minutes.
I answered her by saying we should train for it like we would for anything else in life (like an athletic or academic challenge) We should live intensely for eight minutes at a time several times a day. If you are running, run hard. If you are eating, eat the best food. If you are reading, read the best books. Make the most of your life for eight straight minutes. Then increase the frequency until it becomes a habit.
That way, when your last eight-minutes do come, you’ll have no regrets. You’ll look at your watch as your last seconds tick away and say with confidence, “I have truly lived.”
Eight minutes at a time.