At this time of the year, you always read a story about someone who passes away too early. It is often someone who was just getting their life together and changing it for the better, when all of the sudden tragedy strikes. It seems to always be someone who just had trouble written all over them.
Today’s story is about such a person. It is about none other than Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals. He is a guy who finally turned his life around, only to die on Wednesday falling out the back of a pickup truck during a domestic dispute.
Apparently he and his fiance were arguing. She jumped into the pickup. He ran after her, jumped in, fell out the side and died. He was just 26 years old, and just starting his life over again.
We read stories like this, and realize how easily it could have been us. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t likely have been any one of us falling off the back of a pickup truck, but it could have been our lives cut short in any number of other ways.
It seems like we never learn from things like this. We read these kind of stories. We feel badly about what happened. We reflect on it, but them we go right back to the “same old same old.”
There are two strong lessons to be learned here.
The first lesson is that when you’re fighting in a relationship and the other person wants to leave or be alone, respect that. So many times, people will continue a conversation and say even more hurtful things.
When we fight with our partners, it’s circular. So it’s really better to let them walk away and cool off. Nothing ever gets accomplished in the heat of an argument, except the creation of more arguments.
The second lesson is to answer the question, “What is your wakeup call?”
New Year’s Day is coming. Is that your wakeup call? Are you going to make another bullshit New Year’s resolution that you don’t have the self-discipline to implement in your life?
The only thing constant in our life is change. So why do we always fight it? Why do we always resist what is natural in evolution of life?
Why do we fight so hard when someone asks us to change our ways for the good? Why as humans are we content to sit around mired in things that don’t make us happy, and waiting for rainy days that don’t make us want to do anything?
Chris Henry was turning his life around when it was cut short. So today, think about Chris Henry and do something that takes you out of your comfort zone.
Ask out that person you’ve had a crush on for ages. Walk up to a stranger and wish them Merry Christmas (Oops, I mean Seasons Greetings).
Whatever pulls you out of your comfort zone, only you can do. Think about what would happen if you did one thing outside your comfort zone every day for thirty days.
If you did that, pretty soon those things would no longer be outside your comfort zone. They would be well inside it.
You won’t have to rely on bullshit New Year’s resolutions. You won’t even have to make any this year. It’s never too late to turn your life around and make it everything you want it to be.
So how are you going to pull yourself out of YOUR comfort zone. I want to know.
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7:47 pm
Yea I know what you mean. 3 years ago I was running across the street at night and realized the street was wider than I thought and a car was coming,the car didn’t slow down or stop,So i stopped and when I did, I was so close to this car probably doing about 40mph that I could of reached out and opened the door if it was standing still. It could have been all over right there…wasn’t my time to go I guess.
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9:14 pm
Merry Christmas everyone.
Carpe Diem, now and in the coming new year.
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7:46 pm
I had my whole perspective shifted by considering this.
I’m dead already. My life is only an unlikely and brief abberation somewhere at the ass end of this huge universe. Even if I don’t die young like Chris Henry, even if I live to a ripe old age…so what? It’s a miserably short flash in the Billions of years this planet has been around.
The only meaning my life has is that which I give it. If I decide to hold back from taking chances and living, am I going to look back and be GLAD I cowered in fear? What good will holding back from life do me on my deathbed?
I realized that since I’m already dead to this universe, these few years of LIFE I have are a FREE GIFT! I shouldn’t even be alive in the first place. I’m playing with house money, what do I have to lose? Nothing at all. From this perspective, holding back and playing it ’safe’ makes no sense at all. I really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
We’re all going to die someday and nothing will change that. Once I was able to accept this, a lot of things started to sort themselves out in my head. Fear of talking to women has almost faded for me entirely. A lot of bullshit that used to get to me no longer does.
I would encourage my fellow travellers to try to apply this perspective in their lives. It’s not a one-and-done deal…I still need to remind myself and make adjustments regularly. But once you really drink it all in, once you really begin to accept this as the truth (because it is), it is absolutely liberating.
Like Tony said, Carpe Diem.
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7:45 pm
Thank you for posting this entry. Very true words that hit home…a topic that I’ve been mulling about frequently over the past year. Chris Henry…a life that was cut short…very tragic – it should make us wake up and seize on whatever opportunities we are given in life. Thank goodness someone else I know is advising us to get out of our comfort zone – even if it’s just for a little while. Life is all about growing and if you’re not growing or learning, then you are stagnant and dying, I believe. Life is short. One day you wake up and it’s gone. Learn to conquer the fear that is keeping you back from accomplishing the things in life that you want to do and whatever the outcome, chances are very good that either way you will be glad that you took the risk.
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