One thing that has changed since Jess passed away is that I became afraid of dying. I have never been scared of death, but in the past few months I find myself thinking on it often. It’s a pretty obvious side effect of watching someone you are close to die, it’s not so much fear of death itself, rather how it will happen. Losing control over myself the way she did in the last two months terrified me to my core, and even more so, leaving my kids before they are ready to let me go.

To add to that fear, I have been left with a need to add serious value to my life, make the most of every moment till then end. Understanding how to do that and leaving an official record of who I am for my kids is the very reason for this blog. One of the things I tried unsuccessfully to do in the last few months off Jess’s life was to get her to record video messages for the kids in-case the worst happened. As it turned out, long before we knew the fight was over, she had lost the ability to communicate.

So this is an effort to immortalize myself, leaving a clear picture of who I am, for my kids, in-case I don’t get a chance to show them myself. Morbid? Maybe, but I’ll risk sounding morbid if makes you think about what sort of legacy you are leaving behind. Nobody is promised any amount of time. The Internet has given us a platform to record our lives and our thoughts, for not just our kids, but our distant family generations from now, they will have the ability to search and know their lineage first hand. That has  never been possible before. Think about that… imagine being able to look back at video’s, imagery and philosophy of your great great greats…. pretty damn cool.

You have to understand my mind frame in these past months, all these thoughts, fears and emotions swirling about with this bizarre clarity of the temporary nature of life on earth, its like nothing I have ever experienced before. I’ve been donkey kicked out of my comfort zone and found myself in a place where I need to decide where my energy is going to best spent that helps me find this value I’m searching for.

When you lose somebody who has formed such a big part of your life, you lose a part of yourself and your personality. So first I need to understand who I am, really dig into what I believe and what makes me tick.  That is not an easy thing to do, but once you start looking, you will be amazed at what you find.

Well i have been looking, studying myself and my world post Jess, questioning everything…

You know how you have those moments … when things suddenly make sense. They don’t happen very often, and that’s why they are special. Well I stumbled across this blog a few times in a few weeks, like it was being shoved in my face until I decided to finally pay attention.

It’s called “Wait but Why”, the title of the site says it all…question everything! Most of the articles are brilliant but this particular one was one of those moments when somebody verbalizes they way you feel but have battled to express it. It was pure relief! It’s logical and sensible, and most importantly simple. You can read the article I’m talking about here…

Then shortly after that I came across this new TV series on Netflix… called Cosmos, it goes hand in hand with all the stuff I’ve been reading but has the most incredible, simple, beautiful way of explaining the biggest questions in our world. These concepts go together hand in hand, they question everything and take nothing on face value alone.

Where am I going with this, i feel the majority of humans are stuck in a rut, we have the most incredible planet, and the most incredible ability to imagine, discover and conceptualize, yet we choose to spend the majority of our time here watching TV, getting drunk, working all day in jobs we don’t enjoy, buying stuff, and bickering with each other. Our schooling system, our governments, our parenting , all of these systems are broken, outdated for our new understanding of our potential, perpetuating a cycle that is wasting our most precious powers.

I don’t know how to change it, but you can be damn sure I’m going to start trying, at least with my own kids and myself. I have to try to lift them up high enough, to see the real world above their iPad, the incredible potential they have to leave a positive mark on this world.

I want to seek the truth, no matter how scary that truth is, I want to empower my kids to their full human potential, and as idealistic as that sounds, it should be a given, it should be the base where we start with every person. Not some unrealistic ideal that we scoff at and ridicule. We all want to live in better world, except we all go about doing things the same way every day because we don’t believe we can make a difference, or it’s just to difficult to try. Well I can’t go about things the same as i used to, my eyes have been opened through the reality of death and my value for time has been reset. The time is very much now, for anything you ever hoped to do.

This is going to be an incredible journey. It’s going to challenge everything i know, and I’ll be open to that. I’ll do my best to document it here, as honestly as possible.

P.S If you are looking for a little change in perspective, something visual to put some distance between you and your problems… watch this.