I’ve always loathed the notion of “living on borrowed time,” even though I’m confident that God wears a watch as big as the moon and with no dials.
~Jim Harrison
I went to the doctor, and he told me I have no more than eighty or ninety more years to live. I can’t tell you how this has disturbed my mind and put me into a panic. It seems like just days ago I was crawling naked across my yard, picking daisies and drooling. Now, I’m suddenly faced with the pretty-well imminent prospect of being forced into a funeral suit and pushing up daisies. Okay, the backyard incident was pretty recent. My point is that I’m not ready to face the prospect of shuffling off this mortal coil with so much left undone.
Admittedly, compared to many of my fellow humans, I have racked up a dizzying list of accomplishments. Last year alone, I perfected my recipe for molten chocolate cake, wrote a haunting country and western song (arranged for clarinet and accordion) about my cat, and spent the equivalent of several hundred man-hours sleeping off hangovers in my hammock.
Still, there is so much more to accomplish in the few good years I have left. I have so many as-yet-unrealized dreams and aspirations to fulfill. When will I ever finish developing my Clooney-esque square jaw and my well-differentiated abdominals? When will I compose my epic poem about the devastating beer shortage of the early 80s?
It is too late, now, of course, to alter the past. Far be it for me to wallow in self-indulgent pity and regret. Still, I can’t help but wish that I had taken more steps to preserve my health. If I could turn back the clock, for instance, I would follow the Canada Food Guide more assiduously. I see now that it’s filled with bracing wisdom and sound advice. No question about it, I would eat more leafy green vegetables and more whole grains.
But, damn it all! What if I don’t want to eat poisonous-tasting greens and bread that seems as though it has been dropped and repeatedly stepped on? What kind of cursed cosmic trickery is responsible for the fact that this sort of ghastly fodder is better for you than, say, Polish vodka and chocolate croissants?
On second thought, to hell with it, I say. Better to live only another eight or nine decades, and live them well, than to relinquish the very joys that make living worthwhile. So, the world may be deprived of some portion of my potential legacy. If that is the price to go out in style, then so be it!
