| - Come On! Feel the Illinoise!: The World's Columbian Exposition / Carl Sandburg
"I'm going to make you the happiest man alive."
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| http://207.70.8273/ra/80.ram
Kevin Kelly was in Jerusalem. For reasons too complicated to go into
here, he ended up sleeping on the spot where Jesus was supposedly
crucified. After Kevin awoke, the thought came into his head: live as
if you'll die in six months. So he did. He got rid of all his
possessions. He visited his parents and brothers and sisters for the
last time.
That's an old This American Lifeshow
I just recently heard, and I found it really interesting, though I
didn't know (as I came in on it late when they were re-airing it some
Saturdays ago) at first that he had somehow convinced himself he might
die in
exactly 6 months (I thought he'd been given six months to live by
doctors). He
wasn't really sure why or how he figured this, apparently, but decided
that it would be for the better that, either way, he should live as if
it were true. It had this amazing impact on him,
made him really reverse motives in his lifestyle. For example, he
had always done
things or gathered knowledge thinking that it would benefit him in the
future; he had never really paid too much care to the immediate, just
sort of assuming that things would pay off in the future the way he was
approaching it, in a more long-run way, but this "experiment" forced
him to stop thinking about the future. And the psychological
effect it had on him
when he woke up after his "last day". . . he was really like a new
person. It taught him the true value of charity, the joy (and
necessary initial pain) in real
charity (he forced himself to give away everything, all of his money,
anonymously). It taught him to value life in different way.
I think it would be a healthy exercise.
--------
What will become of it
This love of mine
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