What would you have as your last meal?

If you knew for a fact that you were going to die tomorrow, how would you spend your last 24 hours on earth?

I know how I would spend it, stuck as I am in Cheyenne, Wyoming with no plays in sight. I'd read some of my favorite books, and while I did so I'd stuff myself with chocolate. Why not?

I once had a client who had a serious illness, and confidently believed for about a 6 month period that when she went to bed that night, there was a pretty good chance that she'd be dead the next morning. And if she was going to die, she was going to die with the taste of chocolate on her lips.

Well, she didn't die, she recovered, and gained about 70 pounds, which I helped her to get rid of.

But can you blame her? If you know you're going to die, or at least think there's a high probability of it, why not eat chocolate?

That's why I really cut some slack for those people with chronic illnesses - those people in chronic pain who eat comfort food. You can't really blame them - what other pleasures do they have? Of course it is a Catch-22. By eating all the time to assuage their pain, they put on weight that will add to their pain as they try to move around on muscles that are strained by the extra weight.

Very few of us know when our time will actually come. We can be physically fit, have no chronic diseases.... but be hit by a drunk driver at any time, or killed by a tornado as happened to 50+ people in North Carolina last week. We just dont' know.

If you did know that you have six months to live, what would you do with your time? Would you turn into a party person - pack 6 months of fun and no accomplishment into your life?

Or would you try to accomplish something in those 6 months - leave behind a legacy: a book written, a piece of music performed, good deeds done for others...

And then think...since we don't know when our time will come, should we not spend every day like it is our last day on earth? I don't want to party my life away, and I hope you don't either.

Leave behind a lasting legacy.