Kurt Vonnegut said, “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, it might have been…”. But what if it could be again? What if you had the opportunity to go back and re-live any five days of your life? Would you choose days that were so precious to you that you would give anything to be able to experience them again? Or would you choose days in which you had regrets, and with the benefit of hindsight, change the course of your life? Or maybe you would go back to a day that you did nothing and said nothing and because of that, lived with a lifetime worth of regret and wonder? The conversation had sprung from an evening over several pitchers of beer, when someone posed the question, “If you had to rank the best days of your life, which one would you choose?” From there it morphed into something far greater.
A quick glance at one’s life and for most, it would appear that choosing five days would be an easy task. Precious few of us lead lives that are that exciting. But a closer look might dissuade you from that way of thinking. A middle-aged person has lived more than 15,000 days. Choosing just five of them isn’t all that easy. It would take a thorough examination, which is fine because after all, is the unexamined life really worth living? It would be difficult to fly in the face of Socrates. Who was I to argue with him?
So I sat down and created a chart with five columns: Best Days, Days of Regret, Days of Inaction, Days that Affected Friends and Family, and finally, Days that Affected History. Under “Best Days” I listed obvious ones like my wedding day, my high school and college graduations, the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey game against the Soviet Union, Notre Dame football winning the National Championship my senior year of college, and of course, as a die hard Mets fan–games 6 and 7 of the 1986 World Series. Others were less obvious. Birthday lunches with my favorite aunt. She and I celebrated birthdays one day apart from each other and always celebrated them together. Family holidays back when we still had a large family. Winning State Championships while coaching with great friends.
“Days of Regret” were a little harder to categorize as I am one of those people that believes the mistakes we learn from best are often the ones we make ourselves. Sure there were days I handled poorly, and people I should have treated better, but it was hard to pinpoint one specific day. I decided whichever days I chose, to make sure I treated every person whose path I crossed with the same respect and kindness I would want to be treated. “Days of Inaction” could be as simple as sensing something was wrong, and not going out of your way to help someone. Or driving by someone stuck by the side of the road with a flat tire. But how would you remember those exact days, since they probably happened more frequently than we realized?
How about “Days that Affected Friends and Family”? I have encountered four suicides in my lifetime. Two fathers of friends of mine. One mother of a player in our soccer club. And recently, a close relative in my wife’s family. Suicides are so complicated to understand, especially for a black and white mind like mine. What could any of us have done differently to prevent them? Did we miss the signs? The one thing I do know for certain is that I would give and try anything I could to prevent the people left behind from suffering the pain they did. But what if I was able to prevent them from happening on that particular day, only to find out they went through with it on another day? Could I use one of my five days for a greater good? Which brought me to “Days that Affected History”. In my lifetime, 9-11 jumped out immediately. Along with the Oklahoma City Bombing. And the tragedy of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986.
Armed with my list of days, I painstakingly paired it down to five, taking a combination from each of the columns, and from that list the novel Five Days was created. What about you? Would you choose to have one last day with the person you loved the most so that you could say everything you’d always wanted to say? Would you elect to try to reverse a mistake that you once made–maybe a decision that was made on the spur of the moment and wouldn’t ever be a choice you could defend or would repeat? Or would you simply opt to have the experience of the most blissful day imaginable to enjoy one more time?
A naysayer might ask what the point is. We won’t have the opportunity to re-live five days, or even one day for that matter. But what if we could? The question is simple. Which days would you choose? Send them to me at www.mattmicros.com. Under “Contact”, label it “FIVE DAYS”. From the entries, I will select five people to receive paperback copies of Five Days along with a copy of my most recent release, Nick Nelson Was Here. The deadline is March 1st.
There are no right or wrong answers. Only inspirational ones. Inspire me!