Last Sunday my father-in-law passed away. No one expected this, as he wasn’t very old and he was of a very good health. On Thursday the whole family and many friends gathered at the funeral.

I remember the words of a priest who lead the ceremony. He said that my father-in-law was prepared to die, meaning that he had no unfinished jobs, no debts of any kind and that he gave to his children everything he could. The priest was right.

Nevertheless, Ivan passed away too early and none of us was prepared for this. Loosing a beloved one always catch us unprepared and we always feel that there was something we had to share with that person but for some reason we didn’t.

We often have fun asking children about what they would like to be when they grow up. Then we laugh when they say that they’d like to be a salesman in toy or candy shop. Those answers are simple consequence of the fact that children in early ages still haven’t develop a cleare sense  of future. When we were children, we didn’t think about what we could be in twenty or thirty years from now but what we would like to be now, instead of being just a child. As time went by and we have grown up, we started to think about the future. In a high school we think about what we would like to study. During the study we think about career. When we work we think about retirement. It looks like we always chase something that might happen a year or ten or twenty years from now. Some of those things really happen, but some things never become more than a wish, for this or that reason.  

That leaves us unprepared. We can say that once we die it doesn’t really matter. Of course it doesn’t matter for us, but it matters for others, whose lives we influence.

Thinking about this, I tried to do a quick brainstorming with myself and to answer on couple of simple questions, like

• What would I like to be now?
• Can I change my career now? What do I love to do?
• What can I do for my family an other people right now, at this very moment?
• What would I do if I am retired now, at this age? Can I do that immediately, without waiting for thirty years?
• How can I get rid of all debts today?
• Do I owe somebody?

Even as a quick exercise or just half an hour of daydreaming, those answers can open different possibilities. Not all of them are realistic and some of them can’t be done right now, but there are still many things that can be done today or this week instead of being postponed for another ten years.