Living Unafraid.

I'm poppin' the top off a cold can of philosophy today: do you sometimes hold back on life because of fear? What is that "dream of doing someday" and what's that in your way blocking you?

A friend from Australia wrote me wondering whether my perspective on life has changed. He mentioned the movie "Last Holiday" starring Queen Latifah who plays a woman who finds out she has three weeks to live, so she cashes out her 401K and travels to Europe to do the things she's always dreamed about.

Then there are the lyrics to Tim McGraw's hit song "Live Like You Were Dying":

He said I was in my early forties
with a lot of life before me
when a moment came that stopped me on a dime
and I spent most of the next days
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout the options
and talking 'bout sweet time
I asked him when it sank in
that this might really be the real end
how's it hit you when you get that kinda news
man what'd you do

and he said
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

My health problems certainly made me face the issue of living life to its fullest. I do take risks, I get out and enjoy life, but I do it in spurts, because my doctors haven't said those infamous words: "You have __ weeks to live."

I wonder why I have to wait for those words before I live life without regrets.

To quote the Queen: "Many of us are kind of just living in fear or not taking advantage of those dreams we always had or not telling the people that we love that we love them. So it's just like you wonder, 'What would you do if you only had a few weeks left to live?' "