Are you where you want to be?
Feb 1st, 2008 by Geoff
It was Christmas. I was sat with Sharon having a cup of tea and we were preparing to go out for a well earned (posh) meal. I’d just, one hour since, finished teaching a successful course and I was contemplating on what a great day it had been. We’d had two hundred amazing people attend from all over Europe and the atmosphere had been euphoric.
Then the phone rang. It was a friend who ended my reverie with a swift statement; ‘Geoff. I’m really sorry to disturb you but…. one of the students who was on the course today has died on his way home.’
I can’t lie. I was shocked and upset. The news had caught me off guard and I felt it in my very bones.
It turned out that the man in question was driving home and, mid traffic, had experienced a massive heart attack that had killed him instantly. It was a huge shock to his friends and family because he was a fit man with no obvious ailments. Just his time I guess.
In his late fifties he was a man who loved his motors, and had earned enough in his middle age to treat himself to a particularly nice sport car, the one he had always dreamed of owning. It was this splendid vehicle that he drove down to the course in, and, post training, the one where he tragically spent his dying seconds.
There was little we could do, the ambulance had already taken the man to the morgue and his wife had been informed. I didn’t know him personally, he was from out of town, but I asked my friend to keep in touch and to let me know if there was anything I could do.
The incident had a profound effect on me. I had experienced death before of course; four of my friends were murdered during my time as a doorman and I’d also lost my brother tragically, but something about this passing – even though I did not know this lovely man personally – really moved me. It was not so much the death its self, which was sad enough, rather it was the depth of understanding and insight that his wonderful wife had demonstrated on hearing the bad news. What she said changed the way I looked at my life. Despite the grief that her husband’s unexpected death had brought her, she said she was strangely happy, because he was in the car he had always wanted to drive, travelling back from a course he had always wanted to attend. She was grateful, she said, because her husband was where he wanted to be when he died.
He was where he wanted to be.
How many people can say that?
How many people can say ‘your mum, your dad, your brother, your sister’ was where they wanted to be when they died?
I had to really think about this, very deeply. Because, if I am honest, I don’t know very many people who are where they want to be whilst they are alive, let alone when they die. It really made me think about my own life; was I where I wanted to be? Was I living to my best potential, or was I taking second best and waiting for the right time to change, a time that never seems to materialise. And was I enjoying the bounty that life had on offer, or was I waiting for some illusive rainy-day to enjoy the coffers of my labour?
It forced me to take an inventory of my life, I cleared out all the things that were redundant, and stopped doing all the things that did not make my heart sing.
It was a revealing time.
I could see from my clear-out that probably 50% of my life was either baggage or redundant (including some of the people), liabilities that took more from me than they returned, habits and beliefs that were past their sell-by date. So I stripped things back to the metal, made myself light, and made a point of only engaging in the things that delighted me. It didn’t happen over night. But I got started and I made the changes. I wanted to be in a position in my life so that if tragedy struck unexpectedly (as it is apt to do) and the reaper reaped before my ten score years or more, those I left behind could be happy in my passing, and those I left behind could say ‘yea, my dad, my brother, my husband, my son – he was where he wanted to be.’
Are you where you want to be?
Be well
Geoff Thompson.