Discover life church1/1/2024 ![]() Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is a Unitarian Universalist Minister at the First Parish of Fitchburg and the First Church of Lancaster. Because it already belongs to you right now. Don’t wait to skirt the edges of death to discover life. You have courage within you no tragic event can alter. You are capable of more than you believe. And then notice the gaps in that narrative. Notice about yourself all the things which inspire others. Notice about yourself all the things which make people love you. Talk about yourself in glowing terms and mean it. Whether in your mind or on paper or in some electronic file in the cloud, write a eulogy for yourself. I will be thankful I listened to the increasingly insistent voice within me saying: “Go home, young man.” On my deathbed, may it be many, many years from now, I will not regret my choice. Why aren’t you listening to them now? Or are you? Have you walked across hot coals, either figuratively or literally, and on the other side perhaps didn’t feel one bit different, yet nothing was the same any longer? Must it always take something so life-altering as this to jar loose the small and quiet recognitions we have inside ourselves? Must be that way? Or could we do it on purpose? I realized that in the back of my mind the components of a career which would be truly fulfilling for me were already germinating and maturing inside me, long before I ever became ill. ![]() This appears to be the part which was important: I accepted what my gut was trying to tell me. I somehow knew that the best thing for my career, whatever I chose it to be, was in returning to my roots. But suddenly I wasn’t afraid of that possibility anymore, contrary to what all of my professional friends advised me. As a professional actor at the time I couldn’t imagine a reasonable career path for me existing back home. The leap of faith I made was by agreeing to it. I didn’t make a conscious choice to be different or live more purposefully. I started to feel differently about my life. I didn’t agree with them, and thankfully they were wrong, but it flipped a switch in me nonetheless. Some of the doctors didn’t expect me to survive. Imagine someone saying, “The first 40 years of her life were a challenge, but then something woke her up and the final 60 years were truly amazing.” Assuming that we hover around our own funerals in spirit form (which I very much hope to be true) what words would you like to hear said?Ī little over twenty years ago I was gravely ill. Do it on purpose, just so that it can be said of you. What would you wish people to say about you? What would you wish for your obituary? Do that. So little time to rebuild the bridges we have burned. So little time to do the things we always dreamed of doing. On your deathbed, will you wish you had reconciled? Will the slights and injuries you sustained be worth it in the end? ![]() Some of which you may even be perpetuating yourself. While lying there, after hopefully a long life, what will you look back on with fondness? With regret? With longing?Īnd here’s a most important question: What will you look back on which seemed like a huge deal at the time, but was really not very much at all? To what do you give too much importance now that will mean virtually nothing in the final moments of your life? What will you wish you had done with your life while on your deathbed? Of course, that sounds like a morbid thought, but consider it for a moment.
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