You Are IT

A guy I know was told by his doctor he had cancer and would die in a year. There he was, working at a job that was OK but not great, living in a place that was nice but not paradise, dating a woman he liked a lot but didn’t love. He was warming up, you know? The way most of us do.

So what did he do? He quit his job, sold everything, packed up, and moved to Key West, where he bought a boat, because he always wanted to sail around the Keys in a little boat in the sunshine, and he did.

After awhile, he went to see a doctor in Key West to see how much time time he had left. The doctor got the guy’s old records and ran new tests and then said the first doctor made a mistake: he’d never had cancer at all.

I think about that guy sometimes, sailing around the world on his little boat in the ocean, living his dream, all because he found out he was mortal.

~ Alison Clement