Here’s a big ole dish of Friday reality : Time is running out, for each and everyone of us.

The good news? You have a choice in the matter. Slip in to a deep pit of despair and pine for the wasted moments behind you. Or wake the fuck up and live the hell out of what you have left!

I know I am personally responsible for taking all of this way to seriously. For getting locked up in the fear that I am doing it wrong or missing a piece or not making the right choices. Round and round in my locked down mind this goes taking me further away from living.

The reality is that life can end too early, without your permission or much warning. I was with my father for the last month of his life. When death was hurdling toward him, whether he fully admitted it or not, in quiet moments shared, I knew he saw it coming. He exhaled regrets. Things time was robbing him of. Opportunities he wished he had grasped. I remember thinking if nothing else I will take from his life a deeper appreciation for how I choose to spend my time.

It’s been five years now and I can see more clearly the places where I have dropped the ball on this intention. Where I have slipped in to a state of overwhelm in thinking that to live a full life means to cure a disease, win a nobel peace prize, be better then everyone one else at something. It’s not like that at all.

Living fully, is about being connected to what is in front of us. The people, the moments, the opportunities. And using up moments means loving in a deeply passionate way. Both loving the people and the things you do with a rich, ecstatic fervor!

I’m a girl who can use a bit of a kick in the ass game plan right up front . I offer you my master list.

Ask the questions you’ve always wondered about the people in your life? (cause it really sucks when they die and you realize there was so much you wanted to know)

Write love letters, lots of them, to the people who you adore and cherish.

Buy a mustache (or other ridiculous costume piece) and take pictures of yourself with it on. Oh and make sure you share the pictures with as many people as possible (cause laughter is contagious and photos last beyond your own lifetime).

Smile at strangers. You never whose need for connection you will meet, for possibly the only moment in their entire day.

Hug. Hug. Hug for long extended moments, you know just outside the edges of comfortable (I promise you that feeling can stay with a person even five years after you shared it).

Make an insanely memorable moment with someone you (this one is as open as your wildest imagination).

Play .. for the simple act of playing, seriously it will erase years, transporting you to a total child like abandon.

Dance, sing, move .. music heals and frees you to the right now moments.

Clearly this is only the beginning of a longer list of ways to connect in to your lived fully, loved passionately life. I offer it as a jumping off point. I invite you to share your ways. Cause then our running out time moves from a place of scarcity to one of abundance. And that’s way easier to live from.