Day 77:

So this morning I got some bad news. My neighbor, who's part of our local little community committee here, he's been struggling with some health issues for a few months now, and he did make it to our committee meeting, which was a week ago Tuesday. He tried to call in from the phone, but he was in the hospital and it didn't work out very well. And 2 days later he called me, left me a message. Took me a couple days to actually discover that the message was there, and he asked me to call him back and give him an update on the meeting, and he didn't sound good when I heard the message. And so I was like, man, I gotta call him. And, uh, the last couple days were really busy for me, um, so I planned to do it today. But this morning his wife called and let me know that he had, um, had a bad test in the hospital. They brought him home on hospice care, gave him 6 months to live, but he lasted 2 days. And man, I felt bad. You know, I felt like, gosh, I got so caught up and busy in my life that I didn't get a chance to call this man. And, you know, I mean, it's like he wanted to know how things went with the committee and, you know, what we were going to do moving forward. And like, really, in the grand scheme of things, none of that is going to matter, what will end up mattering for him. But I think, I can't help but think, you know, would my call have mattered to him? Because a couple days before the meeting that he couldn't make it to, he called me and he sounded so bad I just asked him if I could pray with him over the phone. 'And I did, you know, and it was a fervent prayer.' And his wife told me this morning, she said, 'You know, one of the last things Rich mentioned to me was how—' I just gave his name away— 'was how powerful the prayer was that you said for him and how much it touched his heart.' And so You know, I feel like I made a difference for this guy and I could have made a bigger one. You know, I started on this 90-day stretch because I really wanted to make a change in my life and the way that some things are going and what I'm generating. And things are changing. I'm just wondering. You know, are the things that really matter the things that are changing? I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling melancholy today about the whole situation. And, um, but man, I'm so acutely aware that time is short and we don't have like the promise of tomorrow, you know. So make every day count. And for the past 20 minutes, I've been just kind of lollygagging around, sitting in sadness. And, you know, there's still a couple hours left before I call it a day, so it's time to get up and go accomplish something with the time that I have left, because time is precious. And, you know, I thought that I'd learned this lesson before where, you know, don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. And I put off calling this man back. And once again, this has happened a handful of times to me where I lose the chance to actually connect with somebody. And, um, and you know, the thing is, something told me, call him. And I didn't want to because I had these other things in my schedule. I didn't want to take the time to do it. And, uh, I could beat myself up about it. I mean, I literally could beat myself up about it. But I guess what I'm choosing to do instead is to share. If your gut's telling you to do something, listen. Just listen. And I don't know what else to say. Regret sucks. Regret sucks. So a little slice of reality that's not incredibly encouraging or fun, but it's real. So don't waste the time that you have. Don't put off what you can do today until tomorrow. Tell the people that you love you love them. Spend time with the ones that you care about. Smile to that stranger. You know, everybody is fighting a battle that we know nothing about, right? So we're all fighting our battles. That's it. I got nothing else. Sorry to end on that note, but again, hope there's something here somebody can benefit from. Thanks for watching.