What if it's true?

Spot the Black Bat and Win!

I belong to Toastmasters International. Toastmasters promotes public speaking skills. Members take turns practicing the art of speech craft at weekly meetings through short prepared speeches or 2 minute extemporaneous responses to questions (Table Topics).

Recently, one of my fellow toasties presented a speech entitled: "The End: Are you Ready?" He talked a bit about how the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world will be on December 21, 2012. Then he challenged his audience to live the next 1531 days (as of 10/12/2008 at 11:21 am CST) as if they really are our last days; To write our own eulogies and then fulfill our highest expectations of ourselves.

Then, yesterday, a potential client phoned to inquiry about a table. We ended up chatting about the current "economic crisis." This client is a financial advisor who has studied the history of economic depressions. His research has shown that the world suffers a depression every 50 years - in the 30's and 9o's. He says our current recession began in the 90's and that the US would be in a depression if the Feds hadn't played games with Social Security, etc. Those games have caught up with us. He gave me a little free advice: take my money out of the bank and store the cash in a home safe, buy a years supply of groceries, plant fruit bearing trees and a vegetable garden.

So, what if it's true? What if we really are about to have an economic meltdown? Does it really matter since the world is going to end in 2012?

I don't know if it's true.

I do believe that we should set high expectations for ourselves and then do everything in our power to exceed them. We could die at any time. Why not live each and every day as if it were our last?